THOMAS  (MPBELL 

BY-JCUTHBERT 
HADDEN 


FAMOUS 
•  SOOTS' 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THOMAS 
CAMPBELL 


FAMOUS   SCOTS   SERIES 

The  following  Volumes  are  now  ready: — 

THOMAS  CARLYLE.     By  HECTOR  C.  Macpherson. 

ALLAN  RAMSAY.     By  Oliphant  Smeaton. 

HUGH  MILLER.     By  W.  Keith  Leask. 

JOHN  KNOX.     By  A.  TAYLOR  Innes. 

ROBERT  BURNS.     By  Gabriel  Setoun. 

THE  BALLADISTS.     By  John  Geddie. 

RICHARD  CAMERON.     By  Professor  Herkless. 

SIR  JAMES  Y.  SIMPSON.     By  Eve  Blantyre  Simpson. 

THOMAS    CHALMERS.        By    Professor    W.     Garden 

Blaikie. 
JAMES  BOSWELL.     By  W.  Keith  Leask. 
TOBIAS  SMOLLETT.     By  Oliphant  Smeaton. 
FLETCHER  OF  SALTOUN.     By  G.  W.  T.  Omond. 
THE  "BLACKWOOD"  GROUP.    By  Sir  George  Douglas. 
NORMAN  MACLEOD.     By  John  Wellwood. 
SIR  WALTER  SCOTT.     By  Professor  Saintsbury. 
KIRKCALDY  OF  GRANGE.     By  Louis  A.  Barbj^;. 
ROBERT  FERGUSSON.     By  A.  B.  Grosart. 
JAMES  THOMSON.     By  WiLLiAM  Bayne. 
MUNGO  PARK.     By  T.  Banks  Maclachlan. 
DAVID  HUME.     By  Professor  Calderwood. 
WILLIAM  DUNB.\R.     By  Oliphant  Smeaton. 
SIR  WILLIAM  WALLACE.     By  Professor  Murison. 
ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON.    By  Margaret  Moyes 

Black. 
THOMAS  REID.     By  Professor  Campbell  Eraser. 
POLLOK  AND  AYTOUN.     By  Rosaline  Masson, 
ADAM  SMITH.    By  Hector  C.  Macpherson. 
ANDREW  MELVILLE.     By  William  Morison. 
JAMES  FREDERICK  FERRIER.     By  E.  S.   Haldane. 
KING  ROBERT  THE  BRUCE.     By  A.   F.  MuRlSON. 
JAMES  HOGG.     By  Sir  George  Douglas. 
THOMAS  CAMPBELL.     By  J.  Cuthbert  Hadden. 


THOMAS 
CAMPBELL* 

BY 
3:CUTHBERT 

Madden  :: 

FAMOUS 
•SCOTS- 
•SERIES' 


PUBLISHED    BY    : 
CHARLES     'jfviciJS 

scribner's  sons 

Sfiytr  NEW  YORK 


<^ 


I 


^0 
MY  WIFE 

WHO,    BY   HER   QUIET   HELPFULNESS   AND 

FAIR   COMPANIONSHIP,    LIGHTENS   FOR   ME  THE 

BURDENS  OF  THE   LITERARY  LIFE, 

I    DEDICATE  THIS   BOOK 


ENGUSH 


PREFACE 

Reviewing  Beattie's  Life  of  Campbell  in  the  Quarterly 
in  1849,  Lockhart  expressed  the  hope  that  no  one  would 
ever  tell  Campbell's  story  without  making  due  acknow- 
ledgment to  '  the  best  stay  of  his  declining  period.*  He 
would  be  a  bold  man  who  would  think  of  doing  so.  As 
well  might  one  expect  to  write  a  life  of  Johnson  with- 
out the  aid  of  Boswell  as  expect  to  tell  Campbell's  story 
without  reference  to  Dr  Beattie.  In  addition  to  my 
acknowledgments  to  him,  I  have  to  express  my  in- 
debtedness to  Mr  Cyrus  Redding's  'Reminiscences  of 
Thomas  Campbell,'  which,  though  badly  put  together, 
yet  contain  a  mass  of  valuable  information  about  the 
poet,  especially  in  his  more  intimate  relations.  For  the 
rest  I  have  made  considerable  use  of  Campbell's  corre- 
spondence, and  have,  I  trust,  acquainted  myself  with 
all  the  more  important  references  made  to  him  in  con- 
temporary records,  and  in  the  writings  of  those  who 
knew  him.  To  several  of  my  personal  friends,  par- 
ticularly to  Mr  G.  H.  Ely,  I  am  obliged  for  hints  and 
helpful  suggestions,  which  I  gratefully  acknowledge. 

J.  C.  H. 

Edinburgh,  October  1899. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 
ANCESTRY— BIRTH— SCHOOLDAYS   ....  9 


CHAPTER  n 

COLLEGE   AND   HIGHLAND   TUTORSHIPS       .  .  .  20 

CHAPTER  HI 
•the  pleasures  of  hope'  ....  36 

CHAPTER  IV 
continental  travels     .....  51 

CHAPTER  V 

wanderings — marriage — settlement   in  LONDON       .  66 

CHAPTER  VI 
poetical  work  and  prose  bookmaking  ,  ,  85 

CHAPTER  VII 
lectures  and  travels  .....  99 

CHAPTER  VIII 

closing   years  .  ,  .  .  .  .122 

CHAPTER  IX 
personal  characteristics  and  place  as  a  poet     .        141 


THOMAS    CAMPBELL 

CHAPTER  I 

ANCESTRY BIRTH — SCHOOLDAYS 

The  Campbells,  as  everybody  knows,  can  claim  an 
incredibly  long  descent.  There  is  a  Clan  Campbell 
Society,  the  chairman  of  which  declared  some  years 
ago  that  he  possessed  a  pedigree  carrying  the  family 
back  to  the  year  420,  and  no  doubt  there  are  en- 
thusiasts who  can  trace  it  to  at  least  the  time  of  the 
Flood.  The  poet  was  not  particular  about  his  pedigree, 
but  the  biographer  of  a  Campbell  would  be  doing  less 
than  justice  to  his  subject  if  he  denied  him  that  ell 
of  genealogy  which  Lockhart  deemed  the  due  of  every 
man  who  glories  in  being  a  Scot. 

In  the  present  case,  fortunately  for  the  biographer, 
there  is  authoritative  assistance  at  hand.  The  poet's 
uncle,  Robert  Campbell,  a  political  writer  under 
Walpole's  administration,  made  a  special  study  of  the 
genealogy  of  the  Campbells;  and  in  his  'Life  of  the 
most  illustrious  Prince  John,  Duke  of  Argyll,'  he 
has  traced  for  us  the  descent  of  that  particular  branch 
of  the  Clan  to  which  the  poet's  family  belonged.  The 
descent  may  be  stated  in  a  few  words.  Archibald 
Campbell,  lord  and  knight  of  Lochawe,  was  grandson 
of  Sir  Neil,  Chief  of  the  Clan,  and  a  celebrated  con- 
temporary of  Robert  the  Bruce.  He  died  in  1360, 
leaving  three  sonc,  from  one  of  whom,  Iver,  sprang 
the  Campbells  in  whom  we  are  now  interested.  They 
were  known  as  the  Campbells    of  Kirnan,  an   estate 

9 


lo  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

lying  in  the  pastoral  vale  of  Glassary,  in  Argyllshire, 
with  which,  through  many  generations,  they  became 
identified  as  lairds  and  heritors,  '  supporters  of  the 
Reformation  and  elders  in  the  Church.'  In  a  privately 
printed  work  dealing  with  the  Clan  Iver,  the  late 
Principal  Campbell  of  Aberdeen,  who  was  distantly 
related  to  the  poet,  gives  a  slightly  different  account 
of  the  origin  of  the  Kirnan  Campbells,  but  the  matter 
need  not  be  dwelt  upon  here.  There  is  a  suggestion, 
scouted  by  Principal  Campbell,  that  the  poet  believed 
himself  to  be  remotely  connected  with  the  great  ducal 
house  of  Argyll.  In  some  lines  written  '  On  receiving 
a  Seal  with  the  Campbell  Crest,'  he  speaks  of  himself 
as  having  been  blown,  a  scattered  leaf  from  the  feudal 
tree,  '  in  Fortune's  mutability ' ;  and  even  Lady  Char- 
lotte Campbell,  a  daughter  of  the  '  illustrious  Prince 
John,'  hails  him  as  a  clansman  of  her  race,  exclaiming 
*  How  proudly  do  I  call  thee  one  of  mine  ! ' 

These,  however,  are  speculations  for  the  antiquary 
rather  than  for  the  biographer.  They  are  interesting 
enough  in  their  way,  but  the  writer  of  a  small  volume 
like  the  present  cannot  afford  to  be  discursive ;  and  so, 
leaving  the  arid  regions  of  genealogy,  we  may  be  con- 
tent to  begin  with  the  poet's  grandfather,  Archibald 
Campbell.  He  was  the  last  to  reside  on  the  family 
estate  of  Kirnan.  Late  in  life  he  had  taken  a  second 
wife,  a  daughter  of  Stewart,  the  laird  of  Ascog.  Be- 
fore her  marriage  the  lady  had  lived  much  in  the  Low- 
lands, and  now  she  said  she  could  not  live  in  the 
Highlands  :  the  solitude  preyed  upon  her  health  and 
spirits.  Hence  it  came  about  that  the  laird  of  Kirnan 
set  up  house  in  an  old  mansion  in  the  Trunkmaker's 
Row,  off  the  Canongate  of  Edinburgh,  where  the 
poet's  father,  the  youngest  of  three  sons,  was  born  in 
1 7  lo. 

Beyond  the  interesting  fact  that  he  was  educated 
under  the  care  of  Robert  Wodrow,  the  celebrated  his- 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  ii 

torian  and  preacher,  from  whose  teaching  he  drew  the 
strict  religious  principles  which  regulated  his  life,  we 
hear  nothing  of  the  earlier  years  of  Alexander  Camp- 
bell. He  went  to  America,  and  was  in  business  for 
some  time  at  Falmouth,  in  Virginia.  There  he  met 
with  the  son  of  a  Glasgow  merchant,  another  Campbell, 
to  whom  he  was  quite  unrelated,  and  together  the  two 
returned  to  Scotland  to  start  in  Glasgow  as  Virginia 
traders.  The  new  firm  at  first  prospered  in  a  high 
degree,  for  Glasgow  about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  was  just  touching  the  culminating  point  of  her 
commerce  with  the  American  colonies.  Even  as  early 
as  1735  the  Glasgow  merchants  had  fifteen  large  vessels 
engaged  in  the  tobacco  trade  alone.  But  the  outbreak 
of  the  American  War  in  1775  put  a  speedy  end  to  the 
city's  success  in  this  direction.  *  Some  of  the  Virginia 
lords,'  says  Dr  Strang,  'ere  long  retired  from  the 
trade,  and  others  of  them  were  ultimately  ruined. 
Business  for  a  time  was  in  fact  paralysed,  and  a  universal 
cry  of  distress  was  heard  throughout  the  town.' 

Of  course  the  Campbell  firm  suffered  with  the  rest. 
Beattie,  who  had  access  to  the  books,  declares  that 
Alexander  Campbell's  personal  loss  could  not  have  been 
less  than  twenty  thousand  pounds.  Whatever  the  sum 
was,  it  represented  practically  the  whole  of  Campbell's 
savings.  This  was  a  serious  blow  to  a  man  of  sixty- 
five,  with  ten  surviving  children  and  an  eleventh  child 
expected.  He  set  himself  to  retrieve  his  fortunes  as  best 
he  could,  but  he  never  recovered  his  position  ;  and  we 
are  told  that  his  family  henceforward  had  to  be  brought 
up  on  an  income — partly  derived  from  boarders — that 
barely  sufficed  to  purchase  the  common  necessaries  of 
life.  It  was,  however,  in  these  days  of  declining  for- 
tunes that  the  family  was  destined  to  receive  its  most 
notable  member.  The  eleventh  and  last  child,  antici- 
pated perhaps  with  misgiving,  was  Thomas  Campbell, 
who  was  born  on  the  27th  of  July  1777,  his  father 


12  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

being  then  sixty-seven,  and  his  mother  some  twenty-five 
years  less.^ 

It  will  be  well  to  say  here  all  that  needs  farther  to  be 
said  about  the  poet's  parents.  Alexander  Campbell 
belonged  to  a  Scottish  type  now  all  but  extinct — stolid, 
meditative,  somewhat  dour,  fond  of  theology  and  the 
abstract  sciences  :  leading  the  family  devotions  in  ex- 
tempore prayer;  regarding  the  Sunday  sermon  as 
essential  to  salvation,  and  less  concerned  about  the 
amount  of  his  income  than  about  his  honour  and 
integrity.     As  his  son  puts  it : 

Truth,  standing  on  her  solid  square,  from  youth 
He  worshipped — stern,  uncompromising  truth. 

That  he  was  a  man  of  character  and  intelligence  is 
clear  from  the  fact  that  he  numbered  among  his  inti- 
mates such  distinguished  men  as  Adam  Smith  and  Dr 
Thomas  Reid,  the  successive  occupants  of  the  Moral 
Philosophy  Chair  at  Glasgow.  When  Reid  published 
his  *  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind,'  he  gave  a  copy 
to  Alexander  Campbell,  who  read  it  and  said  he  was 
edified  by  it.  '  I  am  glad  you  are  pleased  with  it,' 
remarked  Reid ;  '  there  are  now  at  least  two  men  in 
Glasgow  who  understand  my  work — Alexander  Camp- 
bell and  myself.'  He  had  the  saving  grace  of  humour, 
too,  this  old  Virginia  trader,  though,  from  a  specimen 
given,  it  was  apparently  not  of  a  very  brilliant  kind. 
Some  of  the  boys  were  discussing  the  best  colours  for 
a  new  suit  of  clothes.  '  Lads,'  said  the  father,  whose 
propensity  for  punning  not  even  chagrin  at  the  law's 

^  It  may  be  convenient  to  set  down  in  a  note  a  list  of  Campbell's 
brothers  and  sisters,  with  dates  of  birth  and  death.  The  details 
are  from  the  family  Bible  :  Mary,  1757-1843  ;  Isabella,  1758-1837  ; 
Archibald,  1760-1830;  Alexander,  176 1- 1826 ;  John,  1763-1806; 
Elizabeth,    1765-1829;    Daniel,    1767-1767  ;    Robert,   1768-1807; 

James,  1770-1783  ;    Daniel,  1773 ?    Archibald  and  Robert  went 

to  Virginia,  and  John  to  Demcrara. 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  13 

delays  could  suppress,  '  lads,  if  you  wish  to  get  a  lasting 
suit,  get  one  like  mine.  I  have  a  suit  in  the  Court  of 
Chancery  which  has  lasted  thirty  years,  and  I  think  it 
will  never  wear  out.'  The  worthy  man  lived  to  the 
patriarchal  age  of  ninety-one,  dying  in  Edinburgh — 
whither  he  had  retired  with  his  household  three  years 
before — in  1801.  In  his  last  days  'my  son  Thomas' 
was  the  main  theme  of  his  conversation. 

Alexander  Campbell  had  not  married  until  he  reached 
his  forty-sixth  year,  and  then  he  chose  the  young  sister 
of  his  partner,  an  energetic  girl  of  twenty-one.  It  must 
have  been  from  her  that  the  son  drew  his  poetic  strain. 
She  is  spoken  of  as  'an  admirable  manager  and  a 
clever  woman,'  and,  what  is  of  more  interest,  '  a  person 
of  much  taste  and  refinement.'  She  brought  to  the 
home  the  poetry  in  counterpoise  to  her  husband's 
philosophy.  Like  Leigh  Hunt's  mother,  she  was  '  fond 
of  music,  and  a  gentle  singer  in  her  way '  :  her  poet 
son,  as  we  shall  find,  was  also  fond  of  music,  sang  a 
little,  and  was,  in  his  earlier  years  at  least,  devoted  to 
the  flute.  To  her  children  she  was  certainly  not  over- 
indulgent  ;  indeed  she  is  said  to  have  been  '  unneces- 
sarily severe  or  even  harsh ' ;  but  the  mother  of  so  large 
a  family,  with  ordinary  cares  enhanced  by  the  necessity 
for  practising  petty  economies,  would  have  been  an 
angel  if  she  had  always  been  sweet  and  gracious.  Be- 
tween her  and  her  youngest  boy  there  seems  to  have 
been  a  particular  affection,  and  when  he  began  to 
make  some  stir  in  the  world,  no  one  was  more  elated 
with  pardonable  pride  than  she.  There  is  a  story  told 
of  her  having  asked  a  shopman  to  address  a  parcel  to 
'  Mrs  Campbell,  mother  of  the  author  of  "  The  Plea- 
sures of  Hope.'"  She  survived  her  husband  for  eleven 
years,  and  died  in  Edinburgh  in  181 2,  at  the  age  of 
seventy-six. 

The  house  in  which  Campbell  and  his  family  resided 
at  the  time  of  the  poet's  birth,  was  a  little  to  the  west 


14  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

of  High  Street  near  the  foot  of  Balmanno  Brae,  and  in 
the  line  of  the  present  George  Street.  Beattie,  writing 
in  1849,  speaks  of  it  as  having  long  since  disappeared 
under  the  march  of  civic  improvement,  and  as  a  matter 
of  fact  it  was  demolished  in  1794  when  George  Street 
was  opened  up.  The  Glasgow  of  1777  was  of  course 
a  very  different  place  from  what  it  is  to-day —  very 
different  from  what  it  was  when  Defoe  could  describe  it 
as  'one  of  the  cleanest,  most  beautiful,  and  best-built 
cities  of  Great  Britain';  when  Smollett,  himself  a 
Glasgow  youth,  saw  in  it  'one  of  the  prettiest  towns 
in  Europe.'  In  1777  Glasgow  was  only  laying  the 
foundations  of  her  commercial  prosperity.  She  had,  it 
is  true,  established  her  tobacco  trade  with  the  American 
plantations,  and  her  sugar  trade  with  the  West  Indies, 
but  her  character  as  the  seat  of  an  ancient  Church  and 
University  had  not  been  materially  altered  thereby. 

Even  in  1773,  when  Johnson,  on  his  way  back  from  the 
Hebrides,  had  a  look  round  her  sights,  he  found  learn- 
ing 'an  object  of  wide  importance,   and  the  habit  of 
application  much  more  general  than  in  the  neighbour- 
ing University  of  Edinburgh.'     Trade  and  letters  still 
joined  hands,  so  that  Gibbon  could  not  inappropriately 
speak  of  Glasgow  as  '  the  literary  and  commercial  city,' 
and  one  might  still  walk  her  streets  without  at  every 
corner  being  'nosed,'  to  use  De  Quincey's  phrase,  by 
something    which    reminded    him    of   '  that    detestable 
commerce.'      Whether  Glasgow  was  altogether  a  meet 
nurse  for  a  poetic  child  may  perhaps  be  doubted.     The 
time  came  when  Campbell  himself  thought  she  was  not. 
The   town,    said  he,  has  'a  cold,   raw,   wretchedly  wet 
climate,   the  very   nursery  of   sore    throats    and    chest 
diseases.'     Redding  once  chafTed  him  about  it,      '  Did 
you  ever  see  Wapping  on  a  drizzling,  wet,  spring  day  ? ' 
be  asked  in  reply.      'That  is  just  the  appearance  of 
Glasgow  for  three  parts  of  the  year.'     But  Glasgow  was 
not  so  bad  as  yet.     She  was  still  surrounded  by  the 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  15 

cornfields  and  the  hedgerows  and  the  orchards  of 
Lanarkshire,  her  few  streets  practically  within  a  stone's 
throw  of  the  Cathedral  and  the  College. 

The  youngest  of  their  family,  the  son  of  the  father's 
old  age,  Thomas  Campbell  was  naturally  thought  much 
of  by  his  parents.  He  had  been  baptized  by,  and  indeed 
named  after,  Dr  Thomas  Reid,  and  the  old  Virginia 
merchant  is  said  to  have  had  a  presentiment  that  he 
would  in  some  way  or  other  do  honour  to  his  name  and 
country.  What  proud  father  has  not  thought  the  same? 
That  he  was  regarded  as  a  precocious  child  goes  without 
saying.  We  are  told  that  he  uttered  quaint,  old-fashioned 
remarks  which  were  '  much  too  wise  for  his  little  curly 
head';  and  he  was  of  so  inquisitive  a  turn — but  then 
all  children  are  inquisitive — that  he  found  amusement 
and  information  in  everything  that  fell  in  his  way.  A 
sister,  nineteen  years  his  senior,  taught  him  his  letters ; 
and  in  1785  he  was  handed  over  to  the  care  of  David 
Allison,  the  scholarly  master  of  the  Grammar  School. 
Allison  was  a  rigid  disciplinarian  of  the  good  old  type, 
who  seems  to  have  whipped  the  dead  languages  into 
his  pupils  with  all  the  energy  of  Gil  Bias'  master. 
Campbell  remained  under  him  for  four  years.  He  be- 
gan his  studies  in  such  earnest  that  he  made  himself 
ill,  and  had  to  be  removed  to  a  cottage  at  Cathcart, 
where  for  six  weeks  he  was  nursed  by  an  aged  'webster' 
and  his  wife. 

No  doubt  the  little  holiday  had  its  influence  at  the 
time;  it  certainly  had  its  influence  in  later  life  when, 
after  a  visit  to  the  '  green  waving  woods  on  the  margin 
of  Cart,'  he  wrote  his  not  unpleasing  stanzas  on  this 
scene  of  his  early  youth.  In  any  case  he  left  the  country 
cottage  rather  reluctantly,  and  returned  to  his  lessons  at 
the  Grammar  School.  He  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
a  particularly  industrious  student.  He  had  certainly 
an  ambition  to  excel,  and  he  was  invariably  at  the  top 
of  his  class;  but  he  made  progress  rather  by  fits  and 


1 6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

starts  than  by  steady,  laborious  plodding.  In  this  re- 
spect, of  course,  he  was  only  like  a  great  many  more 
celebrities  who  have  been  dunces  in  the  schoolroom. 
Not  that  Campbell  was  in  any  sense  a  dunce.  He  was 
especially  enamoured  of  the  classics ;  so  much  so,  in- 
deed, that,  as  Beattie  gravely  certifies,  he  '  could  de- 
claim with  great  fluency  at  the  evening  fireside  in  the 
language  of  Greece  and  Rome ' ;  and  some  of  the 
translations  which  he  made  for  Allison  were  considered 
good  enough  to  be  printed  by  the  enthusiastic  bio- 
grapher. His  love  for  Greek,  in  particular,  was  the 
subject  of  much  remark,  both  then  and  afterwards. 
Redding  says  he  could  repeat  thirty  or  forty  Greek 
verses  applicable  to  any  subject  that  might  be  under 
discussion.  Beattie,  again,  tells  that  Greek  was  his 
'  pride  and  solace '  all  through  life ;  and  there  is 
good  authority  for  saying  that,  even  after  he  had 
made  a  name  as  a  poet,  he  wished  to  be  considered 
a  Greek  scholar  first  and  a  poet  afterwards.  That  he 
was  quite  sincere  in  the  matter  may  be  gathered  from 
the  circumstance  of  his  having  in  his  last  days  given  his 
niece  a  series  of  daily  lessons  in  the  language  of  Homer, 
'  all  in  the  Greek  character  and  written  with  his  own 
hand.'  Nevertheless,  as  a  Grecian,  the  classical  world 
can  as  well  do  without  Thomas  Campbell  as  the  Princi- 
pal at  Louvain,  in  *  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,'  found  that 
he  could  do  without  Greek  itself. 

With  all  his  enthusiasm  for  the  classics,  Campbell 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  anything  less  of  a  boy  than 
his  fellows  at  the  Grammar  School.  He  loved  Greek, 
but  he  loved  games  too.  There  are  tales  of  stone  fights 
with  the  Shettleston  urchins,  such  as  Scott  has  described 
in  his  story  of  Green-breeks,  and  of  strawberry  raids 
in  suburban  gardens  which  for  days  afterwards  made 
him  restive  under  the  pious  literature  prescribed  by  his 
father.  That  he  was  indeed  a  very  boy  is  shown  by  at 
least  one  amusing  anecdote.     His  mother  had  a  cousin. 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  17 

an  old  bedridden  lady,  about  whose  frail  tenure  of  life 
she  felt  much  anxiety.  Every  morning  she  would  send 
either  Tom  or  his  brother  Daniel  to  ask  '  how  Mrs 
Simpson  was  to-day.'  One  day  Tom  wanted  to  go  on 
a  blackberry  expedition  ;  his  mother  wanted  him  to 
inquire,  as  usual,  about  '  this  deil  of  an  auld  wife  that 
would  neither  die  nor  get  better.'  Daniel  suggested 
that  there  was  no  need  to  go  :  'just  say  that  she's  better 
or  worse.'  The  boys  continued  to  report  in  this  way 
for  weeks  and  months,  but  finding  that  an  unfavourable 
bulletin  only  sent  them  back  earlier  next  morning,  they 
agreed  that  the  old  lady  should  get  better.  One  day 
Tom  announced  that  Mrs  Simpson  had  quite  recovered 
— and  a  few  hours  later  the  funeral  invitation  arrived  ! 
Campbell,  in  telling  the  story  long  after,  says  he  was 
much  less  pained  by  the  cuffing  he  received  from  his 
mother  than  by  a  few  words  from  his  father.  The  old 
man  '  never  raised  a  hand  to  us,  and  I  would  advise 
all  fathers  who  would  have  their  children  to  love  their 
memory  to  follow  his  example.'  The  wisdom  is  not 
Solomonic,  but  that  Campbell  set  much  store  by  it 
is  quite  evident  from  the  frequent  reference  which 
he  makes  in  later  life  to  his  father's  sparing  of  the 
rod. 

Meanwhile  he  was  giving  indication  of  his  literary 
bent  in  the  manner  usual  with  youngsters.  The 
*  magic  of  nature,'  to  quote  his  own  words,  had  first 
'  breathed  on  his  mind '  during  his  six  weeks  in  the 
country,  and  the  result  was  a  '  Poem  on  the  Seasons,' 
in  which  the  conventional  expression  of  the  obvious 
runs  through  some  hundred  lines  or  more.  A  year  later, 
that  is  to  say  in  1788,  he  wrote  an  elegy  '  On  the  death 
of  a  favourite  parrot,'  of  which  one  can  only  remark 
that  it  will  at  least  bear  comparison  with  the  reputed 
tribute  of  Master  Samuel  Johnson  to  his  duck.  Strange 
to  say  among  the  last  things  which  Campbell  v/rote  were 
some  lines  on  a  parrot,  so  that  any  one  who  is  interested 

B 


1 8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

enough  can   make  a  critical    comparison   between  his 
elegiac  poems  in  youth  and  age. 

But  Campbell  was  doing  better  things  than  calling 
upon  Melpomene,  the  queen  of  tears,  to  attend  his 
'  dirge  of  woe '  on  account  of  poor  Poll.  Mr  Allison 
was  in  the  habit  of  prescribing  translations  from  the 
classics  into  EngUsh,  which  might  be  either  in  prose  or 
in  verse,  as  his  pupils  thought  fit.  Campbell  chose 
verse.  He  made  translations  from  Anacreon,  from 
Virgil,  from  Horace,  and  from  other  Greek  and  Latin 
writers,  all  with  a  fair  measure  of  success,  considering 
his  years.  Indeed  these  verse  translations  are  much 
superior  to  his  original  efforts  of  the  same  and  even  of 
later  date.  Beattie,  who  saw  the  manuscripts,  remarked 
upon  the  almost  total  absence  of  punctuation  in  them 
all.  It  seems  that  Campbell  regarded  the  art  of  point- 
ing as  one  of  the  mysteries,  to  which  for  many  years  he 
paid  as  little  attention  as  if  he  had  been  an  eighteenth 
century  lawyer's  clerk.  Even  as  late  as  '  Theodoric ' 
(1824),  he  had  to  ask  a  literary  friend  to  look  after  the 
punctuation  in  the  proofs. 

There  was,  however,  no  printer's  convenience  to  study 
in  these  early  days ;  and  the  verse  translations,  punctu- 
ated or  not,  served  their  purpose,  not  only  in  bringing 
prizes  to  the  young  student,  but  in  contributing  towards 
the  acquirement  of  that  facility  in  verse-making  which 
helped  to  lay  the  foundation  of  his  future  fame.  The 
provoking  thing  was  that  his  father  did  not  approve  of 
making  verses.  Like  Jack  Lofty,  he  thought  poetry  *  a 
pretty  thing  enough '  for  one's  wives  and  daughters,  but 
not  for  men  who  have  to  make  their  living  in  the  world  ; 
and  he  would  much  rather  have  seen  his  son  writing  in 
the  sober  prose  of  his  beloved  Doddridge  and  Sherlock 
than  after  the  manner  of  Dryden  and  Pope.  *  Many  a 
sheet  of  nonsense  have  I  beside  me,'  wrote  Campbell  in 
1794,  'insomuch  that  when  my  father  comes  into  my 
room,  he  tells  me  I  would  be  much  better  reading  Locke 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  19 

than  scribbling  so.  But  Campbell  believed  that  he  had 
been  born  a  poet,  and  although  he  did  not  entirely 
ignore  his  father's  favourites,  he  kept  thumbing  his 
Milton  and  other  models,  and  informed  the  parent — 
actually  in  verse  too  ! — that  while  philosophers  and 
sages  are  not  without  their  influence  on  the  stream  of 
life,  it  is  after  all  the  poet  who 

Refines  its  fountain  springs, 
The  nobler  passions  of  the  soul. 


CHAPTER  II 

COLLEGE    AND    HIGHLAND    TUTORSHIPS 

When  Campbell  said  farewell  to  the  Grammar  School 
prior  to  entering  his  name  at  College,  it  was  observed  of 
him  that  no  boy  of  his  age  had  ever  left  more  esteemed 
by  his  classfellows  or  with  better  prospects  at  the  Uni- 
versity. His  first  College  session  began  in  October 
1 791.  At  that  time  the  University  was  located  ir  the 
High  Street,  the  classic  Molendinar,  as  yet  uncovered, 
finding  a  way  to  the  Clyde  through  its  park  and  gardens. 
Johnson  thought  it  was  'without  a  sufificient  share  in 
the  magnificence  of  the  place ' ;  and  not  unlikely  the 
scarlet  gowns  worn  by  the  students  were  in  Campbell's 
day  pretty  much  what  they  were  when  Wesley  reported 
them  'very  dirty,  some  very  ragged,  and  all  of  coarse 
cloth.'  But  there  must  have  been  something  very 
pleasant  about  the  quaint  old  world  life  which  was  then 
lived  in  and  around  the  College  Squares.  Close  upon 
four  hundred  students  used  to  gather  about  the  time- 
honoured  courts,  the  windows  of  the  professors'  houses 
looking  down  upon  them  from  the  north  side  ;  and  the 
memories  of  many  generations  must  have  gone  some 
little  way  to  atone  for  the  lack  of  '  magnificence '  so 
much  deplored  by  the  great  Cham  of  literature. 

The  list  of  professors  in  1791,  when  Campbell 
entered,  did  not  include  any  name  of  outstanding 
note.  His  father's  old  friend,  Dr  Reid,  now  a  veteran 
of  eighty-one,  had  retired,  though  he  was  still  living 
in  the  Professors'  Court,  and  had  been  succeeded  by 
Professor  Arthur,  a  scholar  of  respectable  ability  and 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  21 

varied  acquirements,  for  whom  Campbell  expressed  a 
sincere  admiration.  The  Greek  class  was  taught  by 
Professor  Young,  a  character  of  the  Christopher  North 
and  John  Stuart  Blackie  type,  'a  strangely  beautiful 
and  radiant  figure  in  the  then  grave  and  solemn  group 
of  Glasgow  professors.'  William  Richardson  filled  the 
Humanity — in  other  words  the  Latin — Chair,  and  filled 
it  with  some  distinction  too,  in  his  curled  wig,  lace 
ruffles,  knee  breeches  and  silk  stockings.  Richardson 
was  not  of  those  who  combine  plain  living  with  high 
thinking.  Dining  out  was  his  passion.  It  is  told  of 
him  that  one  evening,  when  the  turtle  soup  was  un- 
usually fine,  he  exclaimed,  after  repeated  helpings,  '  I 
know  there  is  gout  in  every  spoonful,  but  I  can't  resist 
it.'  For  all  this,  he  was  a  good  scholar  and  an  expert 
teacher,  enjoying  some  repute  as  one  of  Mackenzie's 
coadjutors  in  The  Mirror ;  a  poet,  too,  and  the  author 
of  one  or  two  books  which  were  read  in  their  day. 
The  Logic  class  was  in  the  hands  of  Professor  Jardine, 
'  the  philosophic  Jardine,'  as  Campbell  calls  him — '  a 
most  worthy,  honest  man,  neither  proud  nor  partial.' 
Campbell  says  he  could  not  boast  of  deriving  any  great 
advantage  from  Jardine's  class,  but  he  'found  its  em- 
ployment very  agreeable '  nevertheless,  and  he  seems 
to  have  honestly  liked  the  professor.  The  Law  Chair 
was  occupied  by  Professor  Millar,  a  violent  democrat, 
who,  in  the  dark  days  of  Toryism,  '  did  much  in 
Glasgow  to  inoculate  Jeffrey  and  the  academic  Liberals 
with  zealous  views  of  progress.'  Campbell  regarded  him 
as  the  ablest  of  all  the  professors;  and  although  he  was  not 
a  regular  student  of  law,  he  attended  some  of  the  lectures, 
and  was  inclined  to  credit  Millar  with  influencing  his 
views  on  what  he  termed  the  ascendency  of  freedom. 

Such  were  the  men  under  whose  direction  the  poet 
completed  his  education.  Of  fellow-students  with 
whom  he  was  intimate  it  is  not  necessary  to  say  much. 
Perhaps  the  best  known  was  Hamilton  Paul,  a  jovial 


2  2  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

youth   with  a  talent   for  verse,  who  afterwards,  when 
minister  of  Broughton,  narrowly  escaped  censure  from 
the  Church  courts  for  an  attempt  to  palliate  the  short- 
comings of  Burns   by  indiscreet  allusions  to   his  own 
clerical  brethren.     Paul  and  Campbell  were  frequently 
rivals  in  competing  for  academical  rewards  offered  for 
the  best  compositions  in  verse,  and  in  one  case  at  least 
Campbell  was  beaten.     It  was  Paul  who  founded  the 
College  Debating  Club,  which  usually  met  in  his  lodg* 
ings   and   occasionally  continued   its   debates  till   mid- 
night ;    and    in    some    published    recollections   of   the 
Club's  doings  he  bears  testimony  to  Campbell's  great 
fluency   as    a    speaker.       Another    fellow-student   was 
Gregory  Watt,  a  son  of  the  famous  engineer.     Camp- 
bell described  him  as  '  unparalleled  in  his  early  talent 
for  eloquence,'    as    literally   the    most  beautiful  youth 
he  had  ever  seen  ;  and  he  declared  afterwards  that  if 
Watt  had  lived  he  must  have  made  a  brilliant  figure  in 
the    House    of    Commons.      Then    there    was   James 
Thomson,  a  kindred   genius,  known   familiarly  as  the 
'  Doctor,'  with  whom  he  formed  a  life-long  friendship, 
and  to  whom  some  of  the  most  intimate  of  his  letters 
are  addressed.     It  was  to  the  order  of  this  early  friend 
that  two  marble  busts  of  the  poet  were  executed  by 
Bailey,   one  of  which  he   presented   to   Glasgow  Uni- 
versity;   and  it  was    he  who   also   commissioned  the 
well-known    portrait    by  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  which 
accompanies  most  editions  of  Campbell's  works.     Un- 
fortunately, Campbell  just    missed  Jeffrey,  the    'great 
httle   man,'  who    spent  two  happy  years  (i  788-1 790) 
at  the  old   College,   and,  like  Campbell   himself,  was 
subsequently  made  its  Lord  Rector. 

Campbell's  career  at  the  University,  allowing  for 
certain  differences  of  detail,  was  very  much  what  it  had 
been  at  the  Grammar  School.  That  is  to  say,  he 
fought  shy  of  drudgery,  put  on  a  spurt  now  and  again, 
distinguished  himself  in  the  classics,  wrote  verse,  and 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  23 

indulged  freely  in  the  customary  frolics  of  the  typical 
student.  He  confessed  in  after  life  that  he  was  much 
more  inclined  to  sport  than  study;  and  although  he 
admitted  having  carried  away  one  or  two  prizes,  he  ad- 
mitted also  that  he  was  idle  in  some  of  the  classes. 
The  fact  remains  notwithstanding,  that  he  constantly 
outstripped  his  competitors,  who,  as  Beattie  has  it, 
steadily  plodded  on  in  the  rear,  '  the  very  personifi- 
cations of  industry.'  In  his  first  year  he  took  one 
prize  for  Latin  and  another  for  some  English  verses, 
besides  securing  a  bursary  on  Archbishop  Leighton's 
foundation.  Next  session  he  had  more  academical 
honours.  In  the  Logic  class  he  received  the  eighth 
prize  for  '  the  best  composition  on  various  subjects,' 
and  was  made  an  examiner  of  the  exercises  sent  in  by 
the  other  students  of  the  class — certainly  a  high  com- 
pliment to  a  youth  of  his  years.  One  of  the  essays, 
on  the  subject  of  Sympathy,  is  printed  by  Beattie  with 
the  Professor's  note  appended.  From  this  note  it 
appears  that  the  occult  art  of  pointing  was  not  the 
only  matter  which  required  the  attention  of  the  student. 
Professor  Jardine  might  have  passed  over  the  amazing 
statement  that  'God  has  implanted  in  our  nature  an 
emotion  of  pleasure  on  contemplating  the  sufferings 
of  a  fellow-creature ' ;  but  it  was  impossible  that  he 
should  overlook  such  spellings  as  '  agreable,'  '  sympa- 
thyze,'  and  '  persuits.'  Still,  *  upon  the  whole,'  said 
Jardine,  '  the  exercise  is  good,  and  entitles  the  author 
to  much  commendation.' 

The  Professor's  verdict  may  be  taken  as  a  type  of 
Campbell's  whole  career  at  College :  it  was  a  case  of 
'much  commendation'  all  through.  At  the  close  of 
his  third  session  he  was  awarded  a  prize  for  a  poetical 
'Essay  on  the  Origin  of  Evil,'  which,  if  we  are  to 
credit  his  own  statement,  gave  him  a  celebrity  through- 
out the  entire  city,  from  the  High  Church  down  to  the 
bottom  of  the  Saltmarket,     The  students,   who  spoke 


2  4  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

of  him  as  the  Pope  of  Glasgow,  even  talked  of  it  over 
their  oysters  at  I.ucky  MacAlpine's  in  the  Trongate. 
In  the  Greek  class  he  took  the  first  prize  for  a  render- 
ing of  certain  passages  from  the  '  Clouds '  of  Aris- 
tophanes, which  Professor  Young  declared  to  be  the 
best  essay  that  had  ever  been  given  in  by  a  student  at 
the  University.  This  was  not  bad  for  a  youth  of  fifteen. 
Hamilton  Paul  says  that  Campbell  carried  everything 
before  him  in  the  matter  of  his  'unrivalled  transla- 
tions,' until  his  fellow-students  began  to  regard  him  as 
a  prodigy,  and  copy  him  as  a  model.  In  Gait's  Auto- 
biography there  is  a  story — he  heads  it  '  A  Twopenny 
Effusion ' — to  the  effect  that  the  students  bore  the  cost 
of  printing  an  Ossianic  poem  of  Campbell's  which  was 
hawked  about  at  twopence ;  but  as  Gait  erroneously 
says  that  Campbell  published  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope ' 
by  subscription,  we  may  regard  the  story  as  at  least 
doubtful.  Campbell  called  Gait  a  '  dirty  blackguard ' 
for  retailing  it. 

But  it  was  not  alone  by  his  proficiency  in  the  classics 
that  Campbell  compelled  attention.  At  this  time  he 
showed  a  turn  for  satire,  of  which  he  never  afterwards 
gave  much  evidence,  and  his  lampoons  upon  characters 
in  the  College  and  elsewhere  were  the  theme  of  constant 
merriment  in  the  quadrangle.  Beattie  has  a  good  deal 
to  say  about  these  effusions,  but  if  we  may  judge  by  a 
sample  which  Redding  has  preserved,  their  cleverness 
was  better  than  their  taste.  It  was  legitimate  enough, 
perhaps,  to  rail  at  the  length  of  an  elderly  city  parson's 
sermons,  to  make  fun  of  his  oft-recurring  phrase,  '  the 
good  old  way' ;  but  the  worthy  man,  about  to  marry  a 
young  wife,  could  hardly  be  expected  to  relish  this  kind 


of  thing 


So  for  another  Shunamite 
He  hunts  the  city  day  by  day, 

To  warm  his  chilly  veins  at  niglit 
In  the  good  old  way. 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  25 

Adam  Smith  contended  that  it  was  the  duty  of  a 
poet  to  write  hke  a  gentleman.  If  as  a  student  Camp- 
bell had  always  written  like  a  gentleman,  there  would 
have  been  less  of  that  posthumous  resentment  of  which 
his  biographer  complains.  Nevertheless,  his  popu- 
larity as  a  playful  wit  must  have  been  very  pleasant  to 
him  at  the  time.  '  What's  Tom  Campbell  been  say- 
ing ? '  was  a  common  exclamation  among  the  students 
as  they  gathered  of  mornings  round  the  stove  in  the 
Logic  classroom.  And  Tom  Campbell,  if  he  had  been 
saying  nothing  of  particular  note,  would  take  his  pencil 
and  write  an  impromptu  on  the  white-washed  wall. 
Presently  a  ring  would  be  formed  round  it,  '  and  the  wit 
and  words  passing  from  lip  to  lip  generally  threw  the 
class  into  a  roar  of  laughter.'  It  is  but  right  to  say,  how- 
ever, that  these  impromptus  were  invariably  produced 
with  a  view  to  something  else  than  praise.  The  stove 
was  usually  encircled  by  a  body  of  stout,  rollicking 
Irish  students,  and  Campbell  found  that  the  only  sure 
means  of  getting  near  it  was  by  'drafting  the  fire- 
worshippers  ' — in  other  words,  by  making  them  give 
warmth  in  exchange  for  wit.  One  cold  December 
morning  it  was  whispered  that  a  libel  on  old  Ireland 
had  been  perpetrated  on  the  wall.  The  Irishmen  rushed 
forth  in  a  body,  and  while  they  read,  apropos  of  a 
passage  they  had  just  been  studying  in  the  class — 

Vos,  Hiberni,  collocatis, 

Summum  bonuni  in — potatoes, 

the   young  satirist    had   taken    the  best   place    at    the 
stove ! 

Campbell's  third  session  at  the  University  was  eventful 
in  several  respects.  To  begin  with,  it  was  then — in  the 
spring  of  1793 — that  he  made  that  first  visit  to  Edin- 
burgh to  which  he  so  often  referred  afterwards.  It  was 
a  time  of  intense  political  excitement.  'The  French 
Revolution/  to  quote  the  poet's  words,  '  had  everywhere 


2  6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

lighted  up  the  contending  spirits  of  democracy  and  aris- 
tocracy ' ;  and  being,  in  his  own  estimation,  a  competent 
judge  of  politics,  Campbell  became  a  pronounced 
democrat.  Muir  and  Gerald  were  about  to  stand  their 
trial  for  high  treason  at  Edinburgh,  and  Campbell 
*  longed  insufferably  '  to  see  them — to  see  Muir  especi- 
ally, of  whose  accomplishments  he  had  heard  a  '  magni- 
ficent account.'  He  had  an  aunt  in  Edinburgh  ready 
to  welcome  him  ;  and  so,  with  a  crown  piece  in  his 
pocket,  he  started  for  the  capital,  doing  the  forty-two 
miles  on  foot.  Next  morning  found  him  in  court. 
The  trial  was,  he  says,  an  era  in  his  life.  '  Hitherto  I 
had  never  known  what  public  eloquence  was,  and  I  am 
sure  the  Justiciary  Scotch  lords  did  not  help  me  to  a 
conception  of  it,  speaking,  as  they  did,  bad  arguments 
in  broad  Scotch.  But  the  Lord  Advocate's  speech  was 
good — the  speeches  of  Laing  and  Gillies  were  better ; 
and  Gerald's  speech  annihilated  the  remembrances  of 
all  the  eloquence  that  had  ever  been  heard  within  the 
walls  of  that  house.'  In  the  opinion  of  eminent  English 
lawyers  Gerald  had  not  really  been  guilty  of  sedition, 
and  certainly  Muir  never  uttered  a  sentence  in  favour 
of  reform  stronger  than  Pitt  himself  had  uttered.  Never- 
theless, in  spite  of  their  solemn  protests  and  their  fervent 
appeals  to  the  jury,  they  were  both  sentenced  to  trans- 
portation, and  were  sent  in  irons  to  the  hulks. 

The  trial  and  its  sequel  made  a  deep  impression  on 
the  young  democrat.  When  he  returned  to  Glasgow 
he  could  think  and  speak  of  nothing  else.  His  old 
gaiety  had  quite  deserted  him,  and  instead  of  frolics 
and  flute-playing  and  '  auld  farrant  stories '  by  the 
fireside,  there  were  tirades  about  '  the  miserable  pros- 
pects of  society,  the  corrupt  state  of  modern  legislature, 
the  glory  of  ancient  republics,  and  the  wisdom  of  Solon 
and  Lycurgus.'  Never,  surely,  was  any  philosopher  of 
fifteen  so  harassed  by  political  cares  and  apprehensions. 
But  the  gloomy  fit  did  not  last  long.     Campbell  had  to 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  27 

think  of  making  a  living  for  himself,  and  he  began  by 
casting  about  for  something  to  fill  up  his  college  vaca- 
tions. 

It  does  not  appear  that  he  went  to  the  University 
with  any  definite  object  in  view,  but  the  question  of  a 
profession  had  long  since  become  a  pressing  considera- 
tion. Naturally  he  looked  first  towards  the  Church, 
but  his  father,  unlike  the  majority  of  Scots  parents 
about  that  time,  did  not  encourage  him  in  the  notion 
of  wagging  his  head  in  a  pulpit ;  and  so,  after  toying  with 
theology — he  studied  Hebrew  and  wrote  a  hymn — he 
turned  his  attention  in  other  directions.  He  thought 
of  law,  and  spent  some  time  in  the  oflSce  of  a  city 
solicitor.  Then  he  thought  of  business,  and  filled  up 
a  summer  recess  in  the  counting-house  of  a  Glasgow 
merchant,  'busily  employed  at  book-keeping  and  en- 
deavouring to  improve  this  hand  of  mine.'  Next  he 
tried  medicine,  but  had  to  give  it  up  because  he  could 
not  bear  to  witness  the  surgical  operations.  Finally  he 
fell  back  on  the  last  resource  of  the  University  man 
without  a  profession,  and  became  a  tutor.  According 
to  Dr  Holmes,  the  natural  end  of  the  tutor  is  to  die  of 
starvation.  Campbell's  dread  was  that  he  would  die 
of  dulness :  he  had  engaged  to  go  to  the  farthest  end 
of  the  Isle  of  Mull — 

Where  the  Atlantic  wave 

Pours  in  among  the  stormy  Hebrides. 

It  turned  out  to  be  not  quite  so  bad  as  he  antici- 
pated, though,  in  truth,  the  reality  proved  much  less 
pleasant  than  the  retrospect.  In  the  meantime  he  had 
a  very  sprightly  journey  from  Glasgow  in  the  company 
of  Joseph  Finlayson,  an  old  classfellow  who  was  also 
going  to  taste  the  bitterness  of  a  Highland  tutorship. 
The  pair  started  on  the  i8th  of  May  1795.  At 
Greenock  they  spent  a  long  evening  on  the  quay,  '  for 
economy's  sake,'  and  distinguished  themselves  by  saving 


28  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

a  boy  from  drowning.  Campbell  thought  it  pretty  hard 
that  two  such  heroes  should  go  supperless  to  bed ;  so 
they  repaired  to  the  inn,  ate — according  to  their  own 
account — dish  after  dish  of  beefsteaks,  and  drank 
tankards  of  ale  that  set  them  both  singing  and  reciting 
poetry  like  mad  minstrels  of  the  olden  time.  Next 
day,  leaving  their  trunks  to  be  sent  by  land  to  Inverary, 
they  crossed  the  Frith  of  Clyde  to  Argyllshire,  the 
joUiest  boys  in  the  whole  world.  Campbell  says  he 
had  still  a  half-belief  in  Ossian,  and  an  Ossianic  interest 
in  the  CTaelic  people ;  but  this  did  not  reconcile  him  to 
the  Highland  beds,  in  which  '  it  was  not  safe  to  lay 
yourself  down  without  being  troubled  with  cutaneous 
sensations  next  morning.'  Nor  did  the  bill  of  fare  at 
the  Highland  inns  please  the  travellers  any  better.  It 
lacked  variety.  Everywhere  it  was  '  Skatan  agas, 
spuntat  agas,  usquebaugh ' — herrings  and  potatoes  and 
whisky.  But  the  roaring  streams,  and  the  primroses, 
and  the  '  chanting  cuckoos  '  made  up  for  all  the  dis- 
comfort. Campbell,  as  he  expresses  it,  felt  a  soul  in 
every  muscle  of  his  body,  and  his  mind  was  filled  with 
the  thought  that  he  was  now  going  to  earn  his  bread  by 
his  own  labour. 

The  two  young  fellows  parted  at  Inverary,  and 
Campbell  went  on  by  way  of  Oban  to  Mull,  reaching 
his  destination  after  losing  himself  several  times  on  the 
island,  the  entire  length  of  which  he  says  he  traversed. 
His  engagement  was  with  a  distant  relative  of  his  own, 
a  Mrs  Campbell,  a  '  worthy,  sensible  widow  lady,'  who 
treated  him  with  thoughtful  sympathy  and  consideration. 
What  kind  of  tutor  he  made  does  not  appear,  but  he 
evidently  had  the  best  intentions  and  a  humane  regard 
for  his  pupils.  '  I  never  beat  them,'  he  remarks, 
*  remembering  how  much  I  loved  my  father  for  having 
never  beaten  me.' 

We  know  very  little  about  this  part  of  Campbell's 
career  beyond  what  is   told   in   his   own  letters,      He 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  29 

expected  to  find  in  Mull  *a  calm  retreat  for  study  and 
the  Muses/  and  he  was  not  disappointed.  At  first, 
naturally  enough,  he  felt  very  dejected.  The  house  of 
Sunipol,  where  he  taught,  is  on  the  northern  shore  of 
the  island,  from  which  a  magnificent  prospect  of  thirteen 
of  the  Hebrides  group,  including  Staffa  and  lona,  can 
be  obtained.  The  scenery,  on  Campbell's  own  admis- 
sion, is  '  marked  by  sublimity  and  the  wild  majesty  of 
nature,'  but  unhappily  in  bad  weather — and  there  is 
not  much  good  weather  in  Mull — the  island  is  '  only  fit 
for  the  haunts  of  the  damned.'  There  was  plenty  to 
feed  the  fancy  of  a  poet ;  and  yet,  '  God  wot,'  says 
Campbell,  '  I  was  better  pleased  to  look  on  the  kirk 
steeples  and  whinstone  causeways  of  Glasgow  than  on 
all  the  eagles  and  wild  deer  of  the  Highlands.'  His 
trunk  was  some  days  late  in  arriving,  and  as  there  was 
no  writing  paper  in  the  island  he  was  driven  to  the 
expedient  of  scribbling  his  thoughts  on  the  wall  of  his 
room  !  However,  he  soon  got  reconciled  to  his  forlorn 
condition ;  nay,  in  time  he  '  blessed  the  wild  delight  of 
solitude.'  He  diverted  himself  by  botanising,  by  shoot- 
ing wild  geese,  and,  poet  like,  by  rowing  about  in  the 
moonlight ;  and  we  hear  of  an  excursion  to  Staffa  and 
lona  which  filled  him  with  hitherto  unexperienced 
emotions  of  pleasure. 

There  is  even  a  whisper  of  a  little  love  affair.  A 
certain  Caroline  Fraser,  a  daughter  of  the  minister  of 
Inverary,  came  to  visit  at  Sunipol.  Sb*i  was,  according 
to  Seattle,  who  knew  her,  a  girl  of  'radiant  beauty,' 
and  Campbell,  being  himself  well-favoured  in  the  matter 
of  looks — he  is  described  at  this  time  as  '  a  fair  and 
beautiful  boy,  with  pleasant  and  winning  manners  and 
a  mild  and  cheerful  disposition' — it  was  only  natural 
that  the  pair  should  draw  together.  It  was  to  this  lady 
that  the  poem  in  two  parts,  bearing  her  Christian  name, 
was  addressed.  The  first  part,  beginning  '  I'll  bid  the 
hyacinth   to   blow,'  was   written  in  Mull;    the   second, 


30  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

*  Gem  of  the  crimson-coloured  even,'  in  the  following 
year,  when  the  young  tutor  was  frequently  able  to  avail 
himself  of  the  hospitality  of  the  'adorable  Miss  Caro- 
line's '  family.  Verses  were  also  addressed  to  '  A  Rural 
Beauty  in  Mull,'  but  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  the 
'  young  Maria '  thus  celebrated  was  anything  more  than 
a  poetic  creation.  Of  what  may  be  called  serious  work 
during  the  course  of  the  Mull  tutorship  we  do  not  hear 
much.  An  Elegy,  written  in  low  spirits  soon  after  he 
landed,  was  highly  praised  by  Dr  Anderson,  the  editor 
of  the  '  British  Poets,'  who  predicted  from  it  that 
the  author  would  become  a  great  poet;  but  Campbell 
showed  himself  a  better  critic  when  he  characterised  it  as 
'  very  humdrum  indeed.'  Many  of  his  leisure  hours  were 
filled  up  with  translations  of  his  favourite  classics, 
notably  with    what    he   calls    his    old    comedy  of  the 

*  Clouds '  of  Aristophanes,  but  of  these  it  is  unnecessary 
to  speak.  The  real  effect  of  the  Mull  residence  upon 
his  poetic  product  was  not  felt  until  later.  It  might 
be   too    much   to    say    that    '  Lord    Ullin's    Daughter,' 

*  Lochiel,'  and  '  Glenara '  would  never  have  been 
written  but  for  the  author's  sojourn  in  the  Highlands, 
but  the  imagery  of  these  and  other  pieces  is  clearly 
traceable  to  the  promptings  of  island  solitude ;  and 
much  as  Campbell  disliked  his  isolation  at  the  time, 
it  undoubtedly  proved  of  the  greatest  poetic  service  to 
him.  Meanwhile,  after  five  months  of  the  wilderness, 
the  exile  became  irksome,  and  he  returned  to  Glasgow, 
glad  to  behold  the  kirk  steeples  and  to  feel  his  feet  not 
on  the  'bent'  of  Mull,  but  on  the  pavement  of  his 
native  city. 

Campbell  now  entered  on  his  last  session  at  the  Uni- 
versity. There  is  no  detailed  account  of  his  studies  this 
session,  but  he  remarks  himself,  in  his  high-flown  style, 
that  the  winter  was  one  in  which  his  mind  advanced 
to  a  more  expansive  desire  of  knowledge  than  he  had 
ever  before  experienced.     He  mentions  especially  the 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  31 

lectures  of  Professor  Millar  on  Heineccius  and  on 
Roman  Law.  '  To  say  that  Millar  gave  me  liberal 
opinions  would  be  understating  the  obligation  which 
I  either  owed,  or  imagined  I  owed  to  him.  He  did 
more.  He  made  investigations  into  the  principles  of 
justice  and  the  rights  and  interests  of  society  so  capti- 
vating to  me  that  I  formed  opinions  for  myself  and 
became  an  emancipated  lover  of  truth,'  The  impulse 
which  Millar's  lectures  gave  to  his  mind  continued  long 
after  he  heard  them.  At  the  time,  they  seem  to  have 
turned  his  thoughts  very  seriously  towards  the  law  as  a 
profession.  '  Poetry  itself,  in  my  love  of  jurisprudence 
and  history,'  he  says,  '  was  almost  forgotten.  At  that 
period,  had  I  possessed  but  a  few  hundred  pounds  to 
have  subsisted  upon  studying  law,  I  believe  I  should 
have  bid  adieu  to  the  Muses  and  gone  to  the  Bar ;  but 
I  had  no  choice  in  the  matter.'  As  it  was,  the  Muses 
during  this  session,  and  for  some  time  after,  appear  to 
have  received  but  scant  attention.  For  a  whole  year  he 
wrote  nothing  but  the  lines  on  Miss  Broderick  which 
still  retain  a  place  among  his  pubhshed  works,  and  the 
two  poems  which  gained  him  his  parting  prizes  at  the 
University.  The  latter  were,  it  is  assumed,  sketched  out 
in  Mull.  One  was  a  translation  from  the  *  Choephoroe,' 
the  other  of  a  Chorus  in  the  '  Medea '  of  Euripides, 
the  only  prize  piece  which  he  afterwards  included  among 
his  printed  poems. 

During  the  whole  of  this  last  session  at  the  University 
he  supported  himself  by  private  tuition.  Among  other 
pupils  he  had  the  future  Lord  Cunninghame  of  the 
Court  of  Session,  who  indeed  boarded  with  the  Camp- 
bell family  in  order  to  have  the  benefit  of  reading 
Greek  with  the  son.  Cunninghame  says  that  Campbell 
left  on  his  mind  a  deep  impression,  not  merely  of  his 
abilities  as  a  classical  scholar,  but  of  the  elevation  and 
purity  of  his  sentiments.  He  read  much  in  Demosthenes 
and  Cicero,  and  enlarged  on  their  eloquence  and  the 


32  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

grandeur  of  their  views.  It  was  by  these  ancient  models 
that  he  tested  the  oratory  of  the  moderns.  He  would 
repeat  with  the  greatest  enthusiasm  the  most  impas- 
sioned passages  of  Lord  Chatham's  speeches  on  behalf 
of  American  freedom,  and  Burke's  declamation  against 
Warren  Hastings  was  often  on  his  lips.  He  was  firmly 
convinced  at  this  time  that  the  rulers  of  the  universe 
were  in  league  against  mankind,  but  he  looked  forward 
with  some  hope  to  the  joyful  day  when  the  wrongs  of 
society  would  be  vindicated,  and  freedom  again  assume 
the  ascendant.  Lord  Cunninghame  draws  a  charming 
picture  of  the  fireside  politicians,  with  Campbell  at 
their  head,  discussing  the  French  Revolution,  and  de- 
fending their  ultra-liberal  opinions  against  the  assaults 
of  outsiders.  For  his  age  the  poet  probably  took  the 
world  and  the  powers  that  be  much  too  seriously ;  but 
his  early  political  leanings  are  not  without  a  certain 
significance  in  view  of  his  after  interest  in  the  cause  of 
liberty. 

His  last  session  at  the  University  ended,  Campbell, 
in  June  1796,  returned  to  Argyllshire,  again  as  a  tutor. 
This  time  his  engagement  was  at  Downie,  near  Loch- 
gilphead. The  house  stood  in  a  secluded  spot  on  the 
shore  of  that  great  arm  of  the  sea  known  as  the  Sound 
of  Jura.  The  view  to  be  obtained  from  its  neighbour- 
hood made  a  wonderful  combination  of  sea  and  moun- 
tain scenery  ;  but,  like  Sunipol,  the  place  was  altogether 
too  dull  for  the  city-bred  youth.  Campbell  speaks  of 
himself  as  living  the  life  of  a  poor  starling,  caged  in  by 
rocks  and  seas  from  the  haunts  of  man  ;  as  '  lying 
dormant  in  a  solitary  nook  of  the  world,  where  there  is 
nothing  to  chase  the  spleen,'  and  where  the  people 
'  seem  to  moulder  away  in  sluggishness  and  deplorable 
ignorance.'  Still,  it  was  not  quite  so  bad  as  Mull. 
For  one  thing,  Inverary  was  comparatively  near,  and 
Hamilton  Paul  was  there,  as  well  as  the  adorable 
Caroline,   to   whose   charms    Paul,  as  appears  from  a 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  33 

poetical  tribute,  had  also  succumbed.  Campbell,  we 
may  be  sure,  was  oftener  at  Inverary  than  his  letters 
show,  for  the  *  Hebe  of  the  West '  clearly  had  mag- 
netic powers  of  a  quite  unusual  kind. 

Paul  has  a  lively  account  of  the  last  day  he  spent 
with  his  friend  at  Inverary.  It  was  the  occasion  of  a 
'frugal  dinner,'  when  two  old  college  companions 
joined  the  tutors  around  the  table  at  the  Inverary 
Arms.  '  Never,'  says  Paul,  *  did  schoolboy  enjoy 
an  unexpected  holiday  more  than  Campbell.  He 
danced,  sang,  and  capered,  half  frantic  with  joy. 
Had  he  been  only  invested  with  the  philabeg,  he 
would  have  exhibited  a  striking  resemblance  to  little 
Donald,  leaping  and  dancing  at  a  Highland  wedding.' 
The  company  had  a  delightful  afternoon  together,  and 
on  the  way  home  Campbell  worked  himself  up  into 
a  state  of  ecstacy.  He  'recited  poetry  of  his  own 
composition — some  of  which  has  never  been  printed 
— and  then,  after  a  moment's  pause,  addressed  me  ; 
"Paul,  you  and  I  must  go  in  search  of  adventures. 
If  you  will  personate  Roderick  Random,  I  will  go 
through  the  world  with  you  as  Strap."  "  Yes,  Tom," 
said  I,  "  I  perceive  what  is  to  be  the  result :  you  are 
to  be  a  poet  by  profession." ' 

Campbell's  greatest  difficulty  at  present  was  to  settle 
upon  any  profession ;  but  if  his  penchant  for  reciting 
poetry  in  the  open  air  could  have  made  him  a  poet, 
then  indeed  was  his  title  clear.  He  told  Scott  some 
years  after  this  that  he  repeated  the  '  Cadzow  Castle  ' 
verses  so  often,  stamping  and  shaking  his  head  fero- 
ciously, while  walking  along  the  North  Bridge  of  Edin- 
burgh, that  all  the  coachmen  knew  him  by  tongue,  and 
quizzed  him  as  he  passed.  The  habit  was  mad  enough 
in  Edinburgh ;  in  the  Highlands  it  evidently  suggested 
something  like  lunacy.  His  successor  in  the  tutorship 
says  that  in  Campbell's  frequent  walks  along  the  shore 
he  was  often  observed  by  the  natives  to  be  '  in  a  state 

c 


34  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

of  high  and  rapturous  excitement,'  of  the  cause  and 
tendency  of  which  they  formed  very  strange  and  incon- 
sistent ideas. 

If  the  simple  natives  had  suspected  that  the  tutor  was 
in  love,  they  might,  without  knowing  their  Shakespeare, 
have  paid  less  heed  to  these  manifestations.  Campbell 
had  told  Paul  some  time  before  that  a  poet  should  have 
only  his  muse  for  mistress ;  but  it  was  easier  to  preach 
the  precept  than  to  practise  it.  It  is  in  a  letter  to  his 
friend  Thomson  that  we  first  hear  of  this  amourette. 
Speaking  of  a  temporary  brightening  of  his  prospects, 
he  says  :  '  To  console  me  still  further  (but  Thomson,  I 
challenge  your  secrecy  by  all  our  former  friendship),  my 
evening  walks  are  sometimes  accompanied  by  one  who, 
for  a  twelvemonth  past,  has  won  my  purest  but  most 
ardent  affection. 

"  Dear,  precious  name  !  rest  ever  unreveal'd, 
Nor  pass  these  lips  in  holy  silence  seal'd." 

You  may  well  imagine  how  the  consoling  .words  of  such  a 
person  warm  my  heart  into  ecstacy  of  a  most  delightful 
kind.  I  say  no  more  at  present ;  and,  my  friend,  I  rely 
on  your  secrecy.'  Campbell's  secret  has  been  kept,  for 
the  identity  of  this  particular  Amanda  has  never  been 
disclosed.  Can  it  have  been  the  adorable  Caroline  her- 
self? Whoever  she  was,  she  had,  if  we  may  trust 
Beattie,  a  very  favourable  influence  in  promoting 
Campbell's  appeals  to  the  muse.  Defeated  in  all  other 
prospects,  he  took  refuge  in  *  the  enchanted  garden  of 
love,'  and,  in  the  interchange  of  mutual  affection,  found 
compensation  for  all  his  disappointments. 

But  Campbell  had  his  duties  as  a  tutor  to  attend  to. 
His  pupil  was  the  future  Sir  William  Napier  of  Milliken, 
a  great-great-grandson  of  the  celebrated  Napier  of 
Merchiston.  He  was  now  about  eight  years  old,  and 
was  living  with  his  mother  at  Downie,  his  grandfather's 
estate.     His  father,  Colonel  Napier,  returned  from  the 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  35 

West  Indies  shortly  after  Campbell  entered  on  his 
engagement.  Campbell  describes  him  as  'a  most 
agreeable  gentleman,  with  all  the  mildness  of  a  scholar 
and  the  majesty  of  a  British  Grenadier.'  The  Colonel 
took  an  eager  interest  in  the  tutor's  welfare,  and  did  all 
he  could  to  settle  him  in  some  permanent  employment. 
*  He  has,'  says  Campbell  to  Thomson,  '  been  active  to 
consult,  to  advise,  to  recommend  me,  with  warmth  and 
success,  and  that  to  friends  of  the  first  rank.'  With  a 
local  physician  he  united  to  obtain  for  him  a  favourable 
situation  in  the  office  of  a  leading  Edinburgh  lawyer, 
but  unfortunately  a  combination  of  circumstances  baffled 
the  poet's  aims  in  this  direction ;  and,  the  term  of  his 
engagement  having  expired,  he  returned  once  more  to 
Glasgow,  in  a  state  of  the  greatest  concern  about  his 
future.  *  I  will,'  he  declared,  with  that  unnecessary 
rhetoric  to  which  he  was  prone,  '  I  will  maintain  my 
independence  by  lessening  my  wants,  if  I  should  live 
upon  a  barren  heath.' 


CHAPTER  III 

*  THE    PLEASURKS    OF    HOPE ' 

('ampi^eli,  was  now  at  his  wit's  end  about  a  profession. 
With  whatever  intention  he  had  gone  to  the  University, 
he  had  at  last  become  aUve  to  the  stern  fact  that  the 
University  had  done  nothing  for  him  in  regard  to  a 
livelihood.  '  What,'  he  wanted  to  know,  '  have  all 
these  academical  honours  procured  for  me  ?  '  He  was 
dissatisfied  with  himself  for  his  admitted  lack  of  resource ; 
he  was  dissatisfied  with  his  friends  for  their  apathetic 
indifference.  But  something  had  clearly  to  be  done, 
and  after  sundry  ineffectual  efforts  to  reach  a  solid 
standing  ground,  he  again  turned  his  attention  to  the 
law.  'That  is  the  line  which  he  means  to  pursue,' 
wrote  his  sister  Elizabeth,  '  and  what  I  think  nature  has 
just  fitted  him  for.  He  is  a  fine  public  speaker  and  I 
have  no  doubt  will  make  a  figure  at  the  Bar.'  His  idea 
now  was  to  combine  law  with  literature.  Let  him  once 
get  into  a  lawyer's  ofifice  and  he  would  have  no  fear  of 
working  his  way  without  the  expense  of  entrance  fees. 
He  would  write  for  the  leading  periodicals  and  establish 
a  magazine.  He  had,  besides,  one  or  two  translations 
from  the  classics  nearly  ready  for  the  press,  and  for  these 
surely  some  publisher,  he  told  himself,  would  be  willing 
to  pay. 

In  this  optimistic  mood  he  went  off  to  Edinburgh, 
the  home  of  literature  and  law,  where  he  arrived  in 
May,  1797.  His  old  pupil.  Lord  Cuninghame,  was 
now  preparing  for  the  Bar,  and  to  him  Campbell  applied 
for  aid  in  finding  employment.  The  employment  was 
36 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  37 

found,  not  in  a  law  ofifice — for  Campbell  had  no  regular 
training  as  a  law  clerk  to  recommend  him — but  in  the 
Register  House,  where  the  University  honours'  man 
was  set  to  the  humble  tasks  of  a  copying  clerk.  A  few 
weeks  of  extract  making  proved  enough  for  him,  and 
he  threw  up  the  situation  for  one  slightly  more  comfort- 
able, though  not  much  better  as  to  pay,  in  the  office  of 
a  Mr  Bain  Whytt.  There  he  remained,  sucking  susten- 
ance through  a  quill,  until  Dr  Anderson  brought  him 
forth  to  put  him  on  the  road  to  renown. 

Campbell  was  introduced  to  Anderson  by  Mr  Hugh 
Park,  then  a  teacher  in  Glasgow,  who  had  roused  an 
interest  in  the  poetical  clerk  by  showing  a  copy  of  the 
elegy  written  in  Mull.  Miss  Anderson  was  present  at 
the  first  meeting,  and  Beattie  subsequently  obtained 
from  her  some  recollections  of  the  occasion.  She  re- 
marked specially  upon  Campbell's  good  looks.  His 
face,  she  said,  was  beautiful,  and  '  the  pensive  air  which 
hung  so  gracefully  over  his  youthful  features  gave  a 
melancholy  interest  to  his  manner  which  was  extremely 
touching.'  This  description,  it  may  be  observed,  is  in 
part  corroborated  from  other  quarters.  The  Rev.  Dr 
Wardlaw,  who  had  been  one  of  Campbell's  classfellows 
at  Glasgow,  said  that  though  he  was  comparatively  small 
in  stature  his  features  were  handsome  and  prepossessing, 
and  were  characterised  by  an  intelligent  animation  and 
a  cheerful  openness  all  the  more  noticeable  that  they 
gave  place  when  he  was  not  pleased  to  'a  gravity 
approaching  to  sternness.'  Another  friend  speaks  of 
him  as  an  ardent,  enthusiastic  boy,  much  younger  in 
appearance  than  in  years.  Unfortunately  there  is  no 
portrait  of  him  at  this  early  age. 

Dr  Anderson  took  a  fervent  interest  in  the  pensive 
youth.  He  knew  everybody  worth  knowing,  and 
through  him  Campbell  soon  found  his  way  into  the 
best  literary  society  of  the  capital.  Scott,  Jeffrey, 
Dugald  Stewart,    Lord    Brougham,    Henry  Mackenzie, 


38  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  '  Man  of  Feeling,'  George  Thomson,  the  corre- 
spondent of  Burns — these  and  others,  in  addition  to  the 
friends  he  had  made  on  former  visits,  were  now  or  later 
among  the  circle  of  his  acquaintances.  At  a  private 
liouse  he  met  that  '  pompous  ass,'  the  Earl  of  Buchan, 
and  apparently  had  the  bad  manners  to  quiz  him  upon 
his  oddities.  It  was  at  this  time,  too,  that  he  was 
introduced  to  John  Leyden,  with  whom  he  afterwards 
so  notoriously  fell  out.  There  are  two  explanations  of 
the  quarrel.  According  to  the  first,  Leyden  had  spread 
a  report  that,  in  despair  at  his  prospects,  Campbell  was 
seen  one  day  rushing  frantically  along  Princes  Street  on 
the  way  to  destroy  himself.  This  foolish  story  was 
revived  after  Campbell's  death  ;  very  likely  it  was  quite 
unfounded.  The  other  version  of  the  affair  is  to  the 
effect  that  Campbell,  by  his  association  with  certain 
infidel  youths  who  had  started  a  publication  called  the 
Clerical  Review,  allowed  it  to  be  inferred  that  some  of 
his  intimate  friends,  including  Anderson  and  Leyden, 
were  in  sympathy  with  the  unsettling  tendencies  of  the 
new  journal.  There  was  no  reason  why  anybody  should 
draw  such  an  inference ;  and,  in  any  case,  the  ex- 
planation is  unsatisfactory  inasmuch  as  the  quarrel 
was  evidently  of  Campbell's,  not  of  Leyden's  making. 
Whatever  be  the  solution — and  it  is  not  a  matter  of 
importance — there  was  certainly  no  love  lost  between 
Leyden  and  his  somewhat  prim  junior.  Campbell 
seldom  mentions  Leyden's  name  without  a  sneer.  In 
a  letter  of  1803  he  says :  'London  has  been  visited  in 
one  month  by  John  Leyden  and  the  influenza.  They 
are  both  raging  with  great  violence.'  And  again — the 
versatile  Borderer  had  just  taken  a  surgeon's  diploma 
— '  Leyden  has  gone  at  last  to  diminish  the  population 
of  India.'  Nevertheless,  as  we  shall  learn  later  on, 
Campbell  knew  very  well  how  to  value  the  critical 
opinion  of  John  Leyden — when  it  was  in  his  favour. 
But  Dr  Anderson  did  more  for  Campbell  than  present 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  39 

him  to  his  Uterary  circle.  Campbell,  though  he  pro- 
claimed his  dislike  of  another  tutorship,  had  expressed 
his  willingness  to  accept  almost  any  kind  of  literary 
work.  Anderson  accordingly  introduced  him  to  Mun- 
dell,  the  publisher,  and  the  result  was  an  offer  of  twenty 
guineas  for  an  abridged  edition  of  Bryan  Edwards' 
'  West  Indies.'  This  was  not  only  Campbell's  first 
undertaking  for  the  press,  but  the  first  of  his  many 
pieces  of  literary  task-work.  He  was  now  anticipating 
very  much  the  later  experience  of  Carlyle,  who  also 
tried  the  law  in  Edinburgh,  and  became  a  bookseller's 
hack  when  that  '  bog-pool  of  disgust '  proved  impos- 
sible.    But  there  the  parallel  ends. 

Campbell  went  back  to  Glasgow,  walking  the  distance 
as  usual,  to  finish  his  abridgment.  His  mind  was  still 
exercised  about  the  future.  Anything  in  the  law  beyond 
the  most  laborious  plodding  he  had  seen  to  be  quite  out 
of  his  reach.  *  I  have  fairly  tried  the  business  of  an 
attorney,'  he  wrote,  *  and  upon  my  conscience  it  is  the 
most  accursed  of  all  professions.  Such  meanness,  such 
toil,  such  contemptible  modes  of  peculation  were  never 
moulded  into  one  profession.  ...  It  is  true  there  are 
many  emoluments;  but  I  declare  to  God  that  I  can 
hardly  spend  with  a  safe  conscience  the  little  sum  I 
made  during  my  residence  in  Edinburgh.'  This,  of 
course,  is  not  to  be  taken  seriously :  it  is  merely  the 
petulant  cry  of  a  spoilt  and  conceited  youth.  Campbell 
confessed  afterwards  that  at  this  time  fame  was  every- 
thing to  him.  So  far  as  at  present  appeared  he  was  as 
likely  to  achieve  fame  as  to  extract  sunbeams  from 
cucumbers,  and  when  he  miscalled  the  lawyers  as  rogues 
and  vagabonds  he  was  only  giving  voice  to  his  chagrin. 

But  youth  is  not  easily  dismayed.  It  was  at  this 
moment  that,  having  saved  a  little  money,  Campbell 
gaily  proposed  to  start  a  magazine.  He  invited  some  of 
his  college  familiars  to  join  with  him,  declaring  that  he 
would  undertake,  if  need  be,  three-fourths  of  the  letter- 


40  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

press  himself.  'We  shall,'  he  remarked,  'set  all  the 
magazine  scribblers  at  defiance — nay,  hold  them  even  in 
profound  contempt.'  But  his  friends  were  not  so 
sanguine  about  sharing  the  favours  of  a  '  discerning 
public,'  and  the  magazine  project,  like  so  many  other 
projects,  fell  to  the  ground.  It  shows  the  desperate 
frame  of  mind  into  which  Campbell  had  sunk,  that,  in 
spite  of  his  recent  '  malediction  upon  the  law  and  all  its 
branches,'  he  still  professed  himself  an  amateur  of  the 
Bar.  He  tells  Anderson  that  his  leisure  hours  are 
employed  on  Godwin  and  the  'Corpus  Juris.'  The 
latter  he  had  always  regarded  as  a  somniferous  volume, 
but  now  he  finds  that  there  is  something  really  amusing 
as  well  as  improving  in  the  book.  It  certainly  does  not 
seem  a  suitable  work  for  stimulating  the  imagination  of 
a  poet,  but  Campbell  was  only  playing  with  circumstances 
after  all.  Even  yet  he  may  have  had  some  idea  that  the 
'  Corpus  Juris  '  would  prove  professionally  useful. 

In  the  meantime  he  went  on  with  his  abridgment, 
and  wrote  a  few  verses.  Among  the  latter  was  '  The 
Wounded  Hussar,'  a  lyric  suggested  by  an  incident  in 
one  of  the  recent  battles  on  the  Danube.  This  ballad, 
now  entirely  forgotten,  attained  an  extraordinary  popu- 
larity. It  had  been  published  only  a  few  weeks  when  all 
Glasgow  was  ringing  with  it.  Subsequently  it  found  its 
way  to  London,  where  it  was  sung  on  the  streets  and 
encored  in  the  theatres.  It  seemed  as  if  the  fame  for 
which  the  author  hungered  was  to  be  his  at  last,  but 
curiously  enough,  in  this  case  he  would  have  none  of  it. 
'  That  accursed  song,'  he  would  say,  and  forbid  his 
friends  to  mention  '  The  Wounded  Hussar '  again  in 
his  presence.  About  this  time  also  he  wrote  his  '  Lines 
on  revisiting  Cathcart,'  besides  a  '  Dirge  of  Wallace,' 
which  he  sensibly  excluded  from  his  collected  works 
as  being  too  rhapsodical,  though  it  was  often  printed 
against  his  wish  in  the  Galignani  editions. 

Having    finished    his  work    for    Mundell,    Campbell 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  41 

returned  to  Edinburgh  in  the  autumn  of  1797.  What 
his  plans  now  were  is  not  very  clear,  though  from  the 
fact  that  he  spoke  to  his  parents  about  following  him 
when  his  circumstances  permitted,  it  is  evident  that  he 
had  made  up  his  mind  to  reside  permanently  in  the 
capital.  At  present  his  prospects  were  as  gloomy  as 
ever.  Mundell  had  promised  him  some  employment  for 
the  winter,  and  a  further  slight  engagement  on  a  con- 
templated geographical  work  seemed  probable.  At  the 
best,  however,  these  were  but  feeble  supports;  the 
booksellers — who,  he  enquired,  could  depend  on  them  ? 
Some  time  before  this  he  had,  as  we  have  seen,  tried 
medicine  and  surgery  and  failed ;  now,  as  a  sort  of 
forlorn  hope,  he  again  betook  himself  to  the  study  of 
chemistry  and  anatomy.  That,  too,  was  soon  aban- 
doned, and  he  fell  back  once  more  on  the  dernier  resort 
of  a  tutorship.  By  and  by  his  younger  brother  Robert 
sent  him  a  pressing  invitation  to  come  out  to  Virginia, 
and  he  decided  to  quit  Scotland  in  the  spring  of  1798. 
But  here  again  his  design  was  defeated ;  his  elder 
brother  in  Demerara  wisely  interposed  his  experienced 
advice  against  it,  and  Campbell's  oft-expressed  desire  to 
see  the  land  of  Washington  was  never  realised. 

In  all  these  shifting  plans  and  projects  one  discerns 
thus  early  what  proved  the  chief  defect  in  Campbell's 
character — that  irresolution  and  that  caprice  which  were 
so  largely  to  blame  for  many  of  the  vexations  and  dis- 
appointments of  his  later  life.  No  doubt  to  some 
extent  his  friends  were  responsible  for  his  unsteadiness 
of  purpose.  He  was  the  Benjamin  of  his  family, 
petted  and  pampered,  applauded  for  his  little  clever- 
nesses, and  encouraged  in  his  belief  that  he  had  been 
cut  out  for  something  great.  Had  he  been  alone  in 
the  world,  and  absolutely  penniless,  he  would  have  had 
to  exert  himself  to  some  purpose.  As  it  was,  he  never 
stuck  at  an  honest  calling  long  enough  to  know  what  he 
could    do    at  it;    but    having    tried   many   things    per- 


42  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

functorily,  and  failed  in  them,  he  at  length  derived 
inspiration  from  his  empty  pocket,  braced  himself  to 
what  after  all  was  most  congenial  to  him,  and  in  a 
sense,  like  Silas  Wegg,  '  dropped  into  poetry.' 

Speaking  afterwards  of  this  period,  he  says  :  '  I  lived 
in  the  Scottish  metropolis  by  instructing  pupils  in  Greek 
and  Latin.  In  that  vocation  I  made  a  comfortable 
livelihood  as  long  as  I  was  industrious.  But  "  The 
Pleasures  of  Hope  "  came  over  me.  I  took  long  walks 
about  Arthur's  Seat,  conning  over  my  own  (as  I  thought) 
magnificent  lines ;  and  as  my  "  Pleasures  of  Hope  "  got 
on,  my  pupils  fell  off.'  Here  we  have  the  first  inti- 
mation that  Campbell  was  actually  working  upon  the 
poem  by  which  he  made  his  grand  entry  on  the  stage 
of  public  life.  But  the  subject  had  engaged  his 
thoughts  long  before  this.  So  far  back  as  1795,  when 
slaving  as  a  tutor  in  Mull,  he  had  asked  his  friend 
Hamilton  Paul  to  send  him  '  some  lines  consolatory  to 
a  hermit.'  Paul  replied  with  a  set  of  verses  on  '  The 
Pleasures  of  Solitude,'  adding  :  *  We  have  now  three 
"  Pleasures"  by  first-rate  men  of  genius — "  The  Pleasures 
of  Imagination,"  "The  Pleasures  of  Memory,"  and 
"  The  Pleasures  of  Solitude."  Let  us  cherish  "  The 
Pleasures  of  Hope  "  that  we  may  soon  meet  in  Alma 
Mater  J 

The  subject  thus  playfully  suggested  dwelt  in  Camp- 
bell's mind ;  and  although  there  is  nothing  to  show 
that  he  at  once  began  the  composition  of  the  poem, 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  some  parts  of  it 
had  been  at  least  drafted  during  his  two  periods  of  exile 
in  the  Highlands.  At  any  rate,  in  his  '  dusky  lodging ' 
in  Rose  Street  he  now  set  to  work  upon  it  in  earnest ; 
and  by  the  close  of  1798  it  was  being  shown  to  his 
private  circle  as  practically  ready  for  the  press.  Camp- 
bell's intention  appears  to  have  been  to  publish  it  by 
subscription,  and  on  that  understanding  a  friend  gave 
bim  p^i5  to  pay  for  the  printing.      Ur  Anderson,  how- 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  43 

ever,  intervened ;  and  after  he  had  discussed  the  merits 
of  the  poem  with  Mundell,  the  latter  bought  the  entire 
copyright,  as  the  note  of  agreement  has  it,  'for  two 
hundred  copies  of  the  book  in  quires.'  This  would 
mean  something  over  ^50,  the  volume  having  been 
published  at  six  shillings.  At  the  time  Campbell  prob- 
ably thought  the  bargain  fair  enough,  but  he  naturally 
took  a  different  view  of  the  case  after  some  thousands 
of  copies  of  the  poem  had  been  sold.  It  was,  he  said 
towards  the  end  of  his  life,  worth  an  annuity  of  ;^2oo, 
but  he  added  that  he  must  not  forget  how  for  two  or 
three  years  the  publishers  gave  him  ;^5o  for  every  new 
edition.  When  we  recall  the  fact  that  for  '  Paradise 
Lost'  Milton  got  exactly  ;^  10,  we  must  regard  Camp- 
bell as  having  been  unusually  well  paid. 

After  being  subjected  to  a  great  deal  of  correction, 
mainly  at  the  instigation  of  Anderson,  to  whom  it  was 
dedicated,  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope '  was  pubUshed  on 
the  29th  of  April,  1799,  when  the  poet  was  twenty-one 
years  and  nine  months  old.  It  had  been  announced  as 
in  the  press  some  time  before,  and  there  was  now  a  brisk 
demand  for  copies,  four  editions  being  called  for  in  the 
first  year.  So  early  a  success  had  only  a  near  parallel  in 
the  case  of  Byron,  who  awoke  to  find  himself  famous  at 
twenty-four.  The  author,  it  was  remarked,  had  suddenly 
emerged  like  a  star  from  his  obscurity,  and  had  thrown 
a  brilliant  light  over  the  literary  horizon  of  his  country. 
His  poem  was  quoted  as  '  an  epitome  of  sound  morals, 
inculcating  by  lofty  examples  the  practice  of  every 
domestic  virtue,  and  conveying  the  most  instructive 
lessons  in  the  most  harmonious  language.'  One  critic 
said  it  gave  fair  promise  of  his  rivalling  some  of  the 
greatest  poets  of  modern  times;  another  critic  com- 
mended it  for  its  sublimity  of  conception,  its  boldness 
of  imagery,  its  vigour  of  language  and  its  manliness  of 
sentiment.  And  so  they  swelled  the  chorus,  to  the 
same  tune  of  extravagant  eulogy. 


44  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Much  of  the  success  of  the  poem  was  no  doubt  due 
to  the  circumstance  that  it  touched  with  such  sympathy 
on  the  burning  questions  of  the  hour.  If,  as  Stevenson 
remarks,  the  poet  is  to  speak  efficaciously,  he  must  say 
what  is  already  in  his  hearer's  mind.  This  Campbell 
did,  as  perhaps  no  English  poet  had  done  before. 
The  French  Revolution,  the  partition  of  Poland,  the 
abolition  of  negro-slavery — these  had  set  the  passion  for 
freedom  burning  in  many  breasts,  and  'The  Pleasures 
of  Hope '  gave  at  once  vigorous  and  feeling  expression 
to  the  doctrine  of  the  universal  brotherhood  of  man. 
Moreover,  the  moment  was  favourable  in  that  there  were 
so  few  rivals  in  the  field.  Burns  had  been  dead  for  three 
years,  and  Rogers  might  now  be  said  to  stand  alone  in 
the  front  rank.  Crabbe,  suffering  under  domestic  sorrow, 
had  been  all  but  silent  since  his  '  Village '  appeared  in 
1783  ;  Cowper  was  sunk  in  hopeless  insanity.  Neither 
Wordsworth  nor  Coleridge,  both  older  than  Campbell, 
had  secured  a  following;  Scott  had  printed  but  a  few 
translations  from  the  German.  Byron  was  at  school, 
Moore  at  college ;  Hogg  had  not  spoken,  and  Southey's 
fame  was  still  to  make.  There  could  hardly  have  been 
a  stronger  case  of  thej^/zlv  opportunitate. 

It  is  not  easy  at  this  time  of  day  to  approach  '  The 
Pleasures  of  Hope'  without  a  want  of  sympathy,  if  not 
an  absolute  prejudice,  resulting  from  a  whole  century 
of  poetical  development.  The  ideals,  the  standards  of 
Campbell's  day,  have  wholly  altered  ;  were  indeed  passing 
away  even  in  his  own  time.  The  little  volume  of 
'  Lyrical  Ballads,'  published  only  a  few  months  before 
Campbell's  poem,  sounded,  as  it  has  been  expressed,  the 
clarion-call  of  the  new  poetry.  The  manner  thus  intro- 
duced by  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  completely  changed 
the  critical  standpoint ;  and  it  is  perfectly  safe  to  say  that 
any  poem  which  appeared  to-day  with  the  opening  line 
of  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope ' — '  At  summer  eve,  when 
heaven's  ethereal  bow ' — would   meet  with  very  severe 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  45 

treatment  at  the  hands  of  the  critics,  if  indeed  the  critics 
condescended  to  notice  it  at  all. 

Further,  too  much  stress  must  not  be  laid  on  the 
fact,  already  referred  to,  and  always  so  carefully  stated 
by  the  school  editors,  that  the  poem  met  with  a  pheno- 
menal success  on  its  first  appearance.  In  literature 
popularity  bears  no  strict  proportion  to  merit.  Neither 
Keats  nor  Shelley  nor  Wordsworth  was  ever  '  popular  ' ; 
of  '  The  Christian,'  we  are  given  to  understand,  a 
hundred  copies  were  sold  for  every  one  of  *  Richard 
Feverel.'  The  popularity  of  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope ' 
might  easily  have  been  foretold  by  any  one  reading  it 
before  publication,  not  for  any  poetic  excellence  it 
possessed — though  it  was  not  without  poetic  excellence 
— but  because  it  accorded  so  well  with  the  prevalent 
moods  and  opinions  of  a  large  section  of  the  public  at 
the  time.  Given  certain  vulgar  ideas,  the  power  of 
fluent  and  forcible  expression,  and  no  great  depth  of 
thought  or  subtlety  of  imagination,  and  the  breath  of 
popular  applause  may  generally  be  counted  upon. 

In  poets  youth,  when  not  a  virtue,  is  at  least  an 
extenuating  circumstance.  Campbell  was  very  young 
when  he  wrote  *  The  Pleasures  of  Hope.'  At  an  age 
when  an  Englishman  is  midway  in  his  University  course, 
and  perhaps  thinking  of  competing  for  the  Newdigate, 
Campbell  had  finished  his  college  career,  won  all  the 
possible  honours,  and  got  himself  accepted  at  his  own 
valuation  as  'demnition  clever.'  He  was  only  a  boy, 
a  clever  boy,  with  boyish  enthusiasms,  boyish  crudities 
of  thought,  and,  it  must  be  confessed,  a  boyish  weak- 
ness for  fine-sounding  words.  His  poem  was  not  the 
spontaneous  fruit  of  his  imagination.  There  was  no 
inward  compulsion  to  poetic  utterance  as  in  the  case  of 
other  poets  who  wrote  at  an  equally  early  age.  The 
clever  boy  was  moping,  without  definite  aims,  when  his 
friend's  suggestion  conjured  up  a  vision  of  Thomas 
Campbell  admitted  to  the  company  of  Mark  Akenside 


46  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

and  Samuel  Rogers.  True,  these  names  were  not  the 
brightest  in  the  poetical  galaxy,  and  it  might  perhaps 
have  been  better  for  Campbell  if  he  had  schooled  him- 
self by  a  diligent  study  of  Milton  and  Spenser.  But 
there  was  the  goal,  and  there  was  the  motive,  and  he  set 
about  his  poem. 

Undoubtedly  he  made  the  most  of  what  could  easily 
have  proved  a  barren  theme.  The  construction  of  the 
poem  is  certainly  loose  ;  part  does  not  follow  part  in 
any  inevitable  order.  But  in  a  didactic  poem  this  is 
perhaps  an  advantage,  for,  with  all  its  defects,  one  can 
read  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope '  without  the  fatigue  that 
accompanies  a  reading  of  '  The  Pleasures  of  Imagina- 
tion.' To  analyse  the  poem  would  be  superfluous.  It 
faithfully  reflected  the  common  thought  of  the  time,  and 
assuredly  does  not,  as  Beattie  said  it  did,  give  illumina- 
tion to  'every  succeeding  age.'  It  will  be  sufficient  to 
point  out  a  few  of  its  literary  qualities  with  a  view  to  an 
appreciation  of  Campbell's  place  as  a  poet. 
P~~"  And  first  it  must  be  remarked  that  Campbell  was 
subdued  to  the  vicious  theory  of  a  poetical  diction.  To 
him  a  rainbow  was  an  '  ethereal  bow,'  a  musket  a 
'  glittering  tube,'  a  star  a  '  pensile  orb,'  a  cottage  a 
'  rustic  dome.'  It  was  a  principle  with  him  and  his 
school  that  the  ordinary  name  of  a  thing,  the  natural 
way  of  saying  a  thing,  must  necessarily  be  unpoetic. 
This  comes  out  equally  in  his  letters.  When  he  refers 
to  a  railway  train  it  is  as  *  a  chariot  of  fire.'  Instead 
of  saying :  '  I  went  to  the  club  with  his  Lordship,'  he 
must  say :  '  Thither  with  his  Lordship  I  accordingly 
repaired.'  When  he  wishes  to  speak  of  a  thing  being 
'  changed '  into  another,  he  says  it  is  '  transported  to 
the  identity  of  that  other  thing.  In  'The  Pleasures 
of  Hope '  this  characteristic  was  no  doubt  due  in  some 
cases  to  the  exigence  of  rhyme,  which  probably  accounts 
also  for  the  so-called  obscurity  of  certain  of  his  lines. 
For  he  is  not  really  obscure ;  his  stream  is  too  shallow 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  47 

for  obscurity.  On  that  point  it  is  curious  to  note  how 
even  Wordsworth  was  misled.  Perhaps  it  may  be  worth 
while  to  quote  what  he  says  : 

Campbell's  '  Pleasures  of  Hope '  has  been  strangely  overrated. 
Its  fine  words  and  sounding  lines  please  the  generality  of  readers, 
who  never  stop  to  ask  themselves  the  meaning  of  a  passage.  The 
lines — 

Where  Andes,  giant  of  the  western  star, 
With  meteor  standard  to  the  wind  unfurled. 
Looks  from  his  throne  of  clouds  o'er  half  the  world, 

are  sheer  nonsense — nothing  more  than  a  poetical  indigestion. 
What  has  a  giant  to  do  with  a  star  ?  What  is  a  meteor  standard  ? 
But  it  is  useless  to  inquire  what  such  stuff  means.  Once  at  my 
house  Professor  Wilson,  having  spoken  of  these  lines  with  great 
admiration,  a  very  sensible  and  accomplished  lady,  who  happened 
to  be  present,  begged  him  to  explain  to  her  their  meaning.  He 
was  extremely  indignant,  and  taking  down  'The  Pleasures  of 
Hope '  from  a  shelf,  read  the  lines  aloud,  and  declared  they  were 
splendid.  'Well,  sir,'  said  the  lady,  'but  ^vhat  do  they  tnean?' 
Dashing  down  the  book  on  the  floor,  he  exclaimed  in  his  broad 
Scotch  accent,  '  I'll  be  daumed  if  I  can  tell.' 

The  explanation  is,  however,  simple  enough.  Camp- 
bell obviously  meant  '  firmament '  or  '  hemisphere,'  but 
wanting  a  rhyme  to  'afar,'  he  put  the  part  for  the 
whole,  and  said  'western  star.'  This  is  not  exactly 
obscurity  ;  but  for  the  fact  that  Campbell  was  always  so 
careful  to  polish  his  verse  we  should  call  it  clumsiness. 

In  his  management  of  the  heroic  couplet,  Campbell 
was  eminently  successful.  With  the  monosyllabic  rhyme 
the  lines  naturally  end  rather  monotonously  with  a  snap 
as  it  were  :  enjambement  is  not  frequent ;  the  verse  has 
nothing  of  that  freedom  and  fluidity  in  which  Chaucer 
and  Keats  are  sworn  brothers.  But  Campbell  varies 
the  position  of  the  pause  more  frequently  than  Pope, 
and  he  actually  excels  Pope  in  respect  of  rhyme  ;  for, 
with  all  his  correctness,  Pope  was  an  indifferent  rhyin- 
ster.     Apart    from    his    imperfect    rhymes,    which    are 


48  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

sufficiently  numerous,  one  finds  in  Pope  whole  blocks 
of  six  or  eight  lines  ending  in  intolerable  assonances. 
Campbell  is  never  guilty  of  this  fault ;  and  even  in  the 
smaller  sin  of  harping  over  much  on  the  same  rhyme, 
he  is  no  worse  than  Pope.  Further,  he  is  very  deft  in 
*  suiting  the  sound  to  the  sense.'  Many  lines  might  be 
quoted  which  are  full  of  such  music  as  springs  from  a 
varied  succession  of  vowel  sounds  linked  by  alliterative 
consonants.  In  bringing  sounding  names  into  his 
verse,  too,  he  is  as  expert  as  Goldsmith  himself.  Oona- 
laska,  Seriswattee,  Kosciusko — these  are  names  to 
conjure  with.  And  if  '  rapture '  does  duty  too  often 
for  ardent  emotion  of  all  kinds,  if  '  tumultuous '  comes 
too  trippingly  off  the  pen  when  an  epithet  is  required — 
well,  let  us  remember  again  that  he  was  very  young. 
The  poem  was  at  least  a  credit  to  his  years.  Vigour, 
variety,  pleasant  description,  sincere  rhetoric,  youthful 
fervour  and  high  spirits  account  in  the  main  for  its 
popularity.  Its  concrete  illustrations,  its  little  ge?ire 
scenes,  saved  it  from  the  fate  of  most  didactic  poems 
on  abstract  themes.  The  homely  interior,  the  returned 
wanderer,  the  cradle,  the  faithful  dog — these  appealed 
to  the  average  man ;  and  the  political  allusions  struck 
the  right  note  for  the  times.     But  who  reads  it  now  ? 

Before  the  publication  of  *  The  Pleasures  of  Hope ' 
Campbell  was  practically  a  nonentity ;  after  that  event 
he  became  a  literary  lion.  His  experience  was  that  of 
Burns  over  again  on  a  smaller  scale ;  indeed  some  of 
the  distinguished  men  who  had  hailed  Burns'  arrival 
in  the  capital  were  still  alive  to  give  their  acclamations 
to  Campbell,  whom  they  may  not  unlikely  have  regarded 
as  a  possible  successor.  Scott  invited  him  to  dinner 
and  proposed  his  health  amid  a  strong  muster  of  his 
literary  friends.  Dr  Gregory — whose  name  has  sur- 
vived in  connection  with  what  Stevenson  calls  '  our 
good  old  Scotch  medicine ' — discovered  his  poem  on 
Mundell's  counter  fresh  from  the  printer,  and  at  once 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  49 

sought  him  out.  Everybody  wanted  to  meet  him  ;  and 
invitations  poured  in  upon  him  until,  like  Sterne  after 
the  publication  of  'Tristram  Shandy,'  he  found  him- 
self deep  in  social  engagements  for  months  ahead. 
How  he  bore  it  all  we  have  no  means  of  knowing. 
Thirty  years  later  he  speaks  of  himself  as  being  at  this 
time  '  a  young,  shrinking,  bashful  creature,'  though  he 
is  honest  enough  to  add  that  he  had  a  very  high  opinion 
of  himself  and  his  powers.  Probably  the  right  measure 
of  his  timidity  was  taken  by  the  lady  who  described 
him  as  '  swaggering  about '  in  a  Suwarrow  jacket. 

With  the  exception  of  '  Gilderoy,'  Campbell  does  not 
seem  to  have  written  anything  during  the  remainder  of 
1799.  He  conceived  the  idea  of  a  poem  on  'the 
patriot  Tell,'  but  notwithstanding  that  the  subject  must 
have  been  exactly  to  his  liking  he  never  utilised  it. 
Another  idea  which  occurred  to  him  also  failed  of 
fruition,  although  references  continue  to  be  made  to  it  in 
his  correspondence  for  some  time.  This  was  a  poem  to 
be  called  'The  Queen  of  the  North,'  in  which — with 
Edinburgh  as  the  locale — such  themes  as  the  independ- 
ence of  Scotland  and  the  achievements  of  her  great 
men  were  to  be  employed  to  revive  the  old  spirit  of 
freedom.  In  the  meantime,  while  these  projects  were 
passing  through  his  mind,  a  new  edition  of  '  The 
Pleasures  of  Hope '  had  been  called  for,  and  with 
Mundell's  additional  payment  of  jT^^o  in  his  pocket, 
Campbell  decided  to  make  a  tour  in  Germany. 

The  objects  to  be  gained  by  this  pilgrimage  were  per- 
fectly plain  to  him.  He  would  acquire  another  language, 
and  he  would  enlarge  his  views  of  society.  In  the  con- 
versation of  his  travelled  friends  he  could  detect  the 
advantages  of  intercourse  with  the  foreigner,  and  in 
travelling,  as  they  had  travelled,  he  hoped  to  rid  him- 
self of  the  imputation  that  '  home-keeping  youths  have 
ever  homely  wits.'  In  spite  of  his  recent  poetic  perform- 
ance, he  felt  that  he  was  still  a  raw  youth,  who  would 

D 


50  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

make  but  a  poor  figure  in  a  company  of  London  wits ; 
and  although  he  expected  to  be  stared  at  for  his  awkward- 
ness and  ridiculed  for  his  broken  German,  yet,  to  be 
'  uncaged  from  the  insipid  scenes  of  life,'  to  '  see  the 
wonders  of  the  world  abroad,'  to  make  first-hand 
acquaintance  with  that  literature,  so  prominently  repre- 
sented by  Goethe,  which  was  then  rising  Hke  a  star  on 
the  intellectual  world — all  this  he  regarded  as  a  compen- 
sation for  greater  evils  than  his  friends  could  suggest  or 
his  fears  imagine. 

For  one  must  not  forget  that  the  contemplated  tour 
was  not  without  some  risks.  The  year  1800  was  not 
exactly  the  time  that  one  who  valued  above  all  things  his 
personal  comfort,  perhaps  even  his  personal  liberty, 
would  have  chosen  for  a  continental  holiday.  The  long 
wars  of  the  French  Revolution  had  been  in  progress 
for  some  time,  and  Napoleon  had  just  begun  to  make 
himself  famous.  England  was  at  war  with  France; 
France  was  at  war  with  Austria,  and  Russia  had  formed 
a  coalition  with  Sweden  and  Denmark  against  England. 
In  short,  Europe  was  at  the  time  in  such  a  state  of  mili- 
tary unrest  that  no  one  knew  what  a  day  or  an  hour 
might  bring  forth.  But  Campbell,  living  at  home  at 
ease,  thought  very  lightly  of  the  hazards  of  war.  He 
was  tired  of  his  '  dully  sluggardised  '  existence,  without 
definite  aim  or  ambition  ;  and  so,  in  the  beginning  of 
June,  he  walked  down  to  Leith,  and,  with  a  sheaf  of 
introductions  in  his  pocket,  set  sail  for  Hamburg. 


CHAPTER  IV 

CONTINENTAL   TRAVELS 

Campbell's  intention  had  been  to  proceed  from  Harwich 
after  a  week's  visit  to  London,  but,  on  mature  reflection, 
he  decided  that  the  'modern  Babel'  must  wait. 
Some  months  later  he  realised  that  he  had  made  a 
mistake.  'It  is  a  sad  want  not  to  be  able  to  tell 
foreigners  anything  of  London,'  he  then  wrote ;  '  I 
have  blushed  for  shame  when  the  ladies  asked  me 
questions  about  it.'  This,  however,  was  a  point  he  had 
not  foreseen,  and  his  immediate  reasons  for  delaying 
the  London  visit  were  both  frank  and  amusing.  On 
the  eve  of  his  departure  he  explains  to  Thomson  that  he 
had  resisted  the  seductions  of  the  great  city  because  his 
finances  were  not  equal  to  both  London  and  Germany, 
and  Germany  he  would  on  no  account  forego.  More- 
over, he  knew  his  own  nature  too  well.  New  sights 
and  new  acquaintances  would  have  dismissed  the  little 
industry  he  possessed,  and  would  have  soon  reduced 
him  to  the  fettered  state  of  a  bookseller's  fag.  There 
was  still  another  consideration.  He  was  not  fitted  for 
shining  in  a  London  company  just  yet.  When  he  had 
added  to  the  number  of  his  books,  he  might  think  of 
making  his  debiit,  but  for  the  present  he  would  not  run 
the  risk  of  ridicule  on  account  of  his  northern  brogue  and 
his  '  braw  Scotch  boos.'  And  then  comes  this  curious 
announcement :  '  In  reality  my  fixed  intention  on 
returning  from  Germany  is  to  set  up  a  course  of  lectures 
on  the  Belles  Lettres.  I  had  some  thoughts  of  lecturing 
in  Edinburgh,  but  cannot  think  of  remaining  any  longer 


52  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

in  one  place.  If  London  should  not  offer  encourage- 
ment, I  mean  to  try  Dublin.  I  think  this  a  respectable 
profession,  as  the  showman  of  the  bear  and  monkey 
said  when  he  gave  his  name  to  the  commissioners  of 
the  income  tax  as  an  "itinerant  lecturer  on  natural 
history.'"  The  last  sentence  suggests — though  it  is 
impossible  to  be  sure,  for  Campbell's  jokes  were  rather 
heavy-handed — that  he  threw  out  this  idea  in  jest.  If 
he  was  serious,  it  is  another  indication  of  his  habit  of 
easily  adopting  new  professions,  of  which  we  may  learn 
more  in  the  sequel. 

Campbell  had  a  cordial  reception  from  the  British 
residents  in  Hamburg.  He  met  Klopstock,  and  pre- 
sented him  with  a  copy  of  'The  Pleasures  of  Hope.' 
He  describes  the  poet  as  '  a  mild,  civil  old  man,'  one  of 
the  first  really  great  men  in  the  world  of  letters  he  ever 
knew,  and  adds  that  his  only  intercourse  with  him  was 
in  Latin,  with  which  language  he  made  his  way  tolerably 
well  among  the  French  and  Germans,  and  still  better 
among  the  Hungarians.  How  long  he  remained  in 
Hamburg  is  not  certain  :  as  we  shall  see  presently,  he 
had  arrived  at  Ratisbon  in  time  to  witness  the  startling 
military  events  of  July.  The  political  excitement  was 
now  at  its  height.  Several  of  the  Bavarian  towns  were 
in  the  hands  of  the  French,  and  the  upper  valley  of  the 
Danube  was  under  military  government.  '  Everything 
here,'  says  Campbell,  writing  soon  after  his  arrival,  '  is 
whisper,  surmise,  and  suspense.  If  war  breaks  out,  the 
bridge  over  the  Danube  is  expected  to  be  blown  up. 
You  may  guess  what  a  devil  of  a  splutter  twenty-four 
large  arches  will  make  flying  miles  high  in  the  air  and 
coming  down  like  falling  planets  to  crush  the  town  !  .  .  . 
Ratisbon  will  be  shivered  to  atoms  ;  and  as  no  warning  is 
expected,  the  inhabitants  may  be  buried  under  the  ruins.' 

To  be  thus  plunged,  as  it  were,  into  the  thick  of  the 
fray  was  hardly  a  pleasant  experience  for  the  British 
pilgrim.     The  richest  fields  of  Europe  desolated  by  con- 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  53 

tending  troops ;  peasants  driven  from  their  homes  to 
starve  and  beg  in  the  streets ;  horses  dying  of  hunger, 
and  men  dying  of  their  wounds — such  were  the  'dreadful 
novelties '  that  Campbell  had  come  from  Edinburgh  to 
see.  He  describes  the  whole  thing  very  vividly  in 
letters  to  his  eldest  brother.  The  following  refers 
particularly  to  the  action  which  gave  the  French  posses- 
sion of  Ratisbon.     He  says : 

I  got  down  to  the  seat  of  war  some  weeks  before  the  summer 
armistice,  and  indulged  in  what  you  call  the  criminal  curiosity  of 
witnessing  blood  and  desolation.  Never  shall  time  efface  from  my 
memory  the  recollection  of  that  hour  of  astonishment  when  I  stood 
with  the  good  monks  of  St  James'  to  overlook  a  charge  of  Klenau's 
cavalry  upon  the  French  under  Grenier.  We  saw  the  fire  given  and 
returned,  and  heard  distinctly  the  sound  of  French  pas  de  charge 
collecting  the  lines  to  attack  in  close  column.  After  three  hours 
awaiting  the  issue  of  a  severe  action,  a  park  of  artillery  was  opened 
just  beneath  the  walls  of  the  monastery,  and  several  drivers  that 
were  stationed  there  to  convey  the  wounded  in  spring  waggons 
were  killed  in  our  sight. 

In  some  notes  relating  to  the  same  period  he  remarks 
that,  in  point  of  impressions,  this  formed  the  most  im- 
portant epoch  in  his  life;  but  he  adds  that  his  recol- 
lections of  seeing  men  strewn  dead  on  the  field,  or  what 
was  worse,  seeing  them  dying,  were  so  horrible,  that  he 
studiously  endeavoured  to  banish  them  from  his  memory 

There  were,  however,  scenes  of  peace  as  well  as  of 
war.  Some  Hamburg  friends  had  given  him  letters  of 
introduction  to  the  venerable  Abbot  Arbuthnot,  of  the 
Benedictine  Scots  College,  under  whose  protection  it  was 
believed  that  he  would  have  special  opportunities  for 
study  and  observation ;  and  the  hospitality  of  the 
monks  now  '  amused '  him,  as  he  puts  it,  into  such 
tranquillity  as  was  possible  in  that  perilous  time.  The 
'  splendour  and  sublimity '  of  the  Catholic  Church 
service,  notably  the  music,  also  affected  him  with  all 
the  attraction  of  novelty.    But  these  things  were  at  best 


54  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

only  alleviations.  Campbell  had  already  begun  to  sufifer 
from  Johnson's  demon  of  hypochondria,  and  when  the 
novelty  of  his  surroundings  had  worn  off,  he  felt  him- 
self in  the  worst  imaginable  plight  of  the  stranger  in  a 
strange  land.  The  following  programme  of  his  day's 
doings  affords  a  hint  of  his  wretchedness  : 

I  rise  at  seven — thanks  to  the  flies  that  forbid  me  to  sleep — and 
after  returning  thanks  to  God  for  prolonging  my  miserable  existence 
at  Ratisbon,  I  put  on  a  pair  of  boots  and  pantaloons,  and  study 
with  open  windows,  and  half-naked,  till  ten  o'clock.  I  then  chew 
a  crust  of  bread,  and  eat  a  plum  for  breakfast.  At  1 1  my  parlez- 
vous-FranQais  steps  in  with  his  formal  periwig  and  still  more  formal 
bow.  I  chatter  a  jargon  of  Latin  and  French  to  him — for  he  has 
no  English — and  study  again  from  12  till  I  :  dine  and  read  English 
or  Greek  till  2,  and  then  take  an  afternoon  walk.  Under  a  burning 
sun  I  then  expose  my  feeble  carcase  in  a  walk  round  the  cursed 
walls,  or  traverse  the  wood  where  the  Rothmantels  or  '  Red  Cloaks ' 
and  Hussars  amused  us  at  cut-and-thrust  before  the  city  was  taken. 
Sometimes  I  venture  to  the  heights  where  the  last  kick-up  was 
seen,  when  the  poor  Austrians  were  driven  across  the  Danube. 
The  Convent  I  seldom  visit :  we  always  get  upon  politics,  and  that 
is  a  cursed  subject. 

So  indeed  it  seemed.  It  was,  however,  Campbell's 
own  fault.  The  brotherhood  of  the  Schotten  Kirche^ 
had  welcomed  him  very  heartily  on  his  arrival ;  but  they 
were  Jacobites,  and  he  was  so  indiscreet  as  to  make 
open  avowal  of  his  Republican  opinions.  The  result 
was  unpleasant  enough.  One  of  the  monks  denounced 
him  for  his  political  heresies ;  others  regarded  him  with 
ill-concealed  suspicion  and  distrust.  A  countryman  of 
his  own,  who  bore  the  conventual  name  of  Father 
Boniface,  had  recommended  him  to  an  unsuitable  lodg- 
ing at  the  house  of  a  friend,  and  Campbell  complained 
that  he  had  been  robbed  there.     Father  Boniface  met 

^  As  these  sheets  are  passing  through  the  press,  Mr  W.  K. 
Leask  reminds  me  of  Aytoun's  visit  to  the  Scottish  Monastery  as 
recorded  in  the  '  Lays  of  the  Scottish  Cavaliers.'  And  of  course 
the  reference  in  *  Redgauntlet '  is  well  known. 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  55 

the  complaint  with  abuse,  and  '  spoke  to  me  once  or 
twice,'  says  Campbell,  'in  a  manner  rather  strange.' 
One  night  the  Father  dogged  him  into  the  refectory 
and  attacked  him  with  the  most  blackguardly  scurrility. 
*  I  never,'  writes  Campbell,  '  found  myself  so  com- 
pletely carried  away  by  indignation.  I  flew  at  the 
scoundrel  and  would  have  soon  rewarded  his  insolence 
had  not  the  others  interposed.'  After  an  experience  like 
this,  it  was  only  natural  that  he  should  declaim  against 
the  '  lazy,  loathsome,  ignorant,  ill-bred '  monks,  whose 
society  he  had  at  first  found  so  agreeable  !  The  only 
one  for  whom  he  entertained  a  lasting  regard  was  Dr 
Arbuthnot,  whom  he  describes  as  *  the  most  command- 
ing figure  he  ever  beheld,'  and  to  whom  he  unmistak- 
ably alludes  in  '  The  Ritter  Bann,'  one  of  his  later  poems. 

Being  unable  either  to  advance  or  retreat,  and  not 
knowing  what  to  do  with  himself  amid  the  gloom  and 
excitement  caused  by  the  presence  of  two  hostile 
armies,  Campbell  appears  to  have  sunk  into  some- 
thing like  blank  despair.  '  Oh,  God  ! '  he  exclaims 
in  a  letter,  'when  the  dull  dusk  of  evening  comes  on, 
when  the  melancholy  bell  calls  to  vespers,  I  find  my- 
self a  poor  solitary  being,  dumb  from  the  want  of  heart 
to  speak,  and  deaf  to  all  that  is  said  from  a  want  of 
interest  to  hear.'  About  the  future  he  feels  an  in- 
security and  a  dread  which  baffle  all  his  efforts  to 
form  a  scheme  or  resolution.  Low-minded  people 
suspect  him,  and  debate  about  his  character,  and 
wonder  what  he  can  be  doing  in  Ratisbon.  He  can- 
not settle  himself  to  literary  work  of  any  kind.  He 
sits  down  resolved  to  compose  in  spite  of  uncertainty 
and  uneasiness,  and  looks  helplessly  for  hours  together 
at  the  paper  before  him. 

Campbell's  letters  of  this  period  make  indeed  most 
doleful  reading.  They  are  addressed,  for  the  most  part, 
to  John  Richardson,  a  young  Edinburgh  lawyer  who 
enjoyed  familiar  intercourse  with  Scott  and  other  dii 


S6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

majores  of  the  capital.  Richardson  had  promised  to 
join  him  in  Germany,  and  when  Campbell  is  not  voic- 
ing his  woes,  he  is  planning  schemes  for  Richardson 
and  himself  when  at  length  they  are  free  to  start  on  a 
tour.  With  economy  he  thinks  they  might  visit  every 
corner  of  Germany,  travel  three  thousand  miles,  stop 
at  convenient  stages  for  a  few  days  at  a  time,  and  be 
'  masters  of  all  the  geographical  knowledge  worth 
learning '  for  ;!^3o  a-piece.  They  will  require  nothing 
in  the  way  of  baggage  but  '  a  stick  fitted  as  an  um- 
brella— a  nice  contrivance  very  common  here — with  a 
fine  Holland  shirt  in  one  pocket,  our  stockings  and 
silk  breeches  in  the  other,  and  a  few  cravats  wrapped 
in  clean  paper  in  the  crowns  of  our  hats.'  At  country 
inns  they  can  have  bed  and  supper  for  half-a-crown, 
coffee  for  sixpence,  and  bread  and  beer  for  twopence. 
As  for  books,  Campbell  will  always  manage  to  carry 
enough  in  his  pockets  for  evening  amusement ;  but 
Richardson  must  'bring,  for  God's  sake,  Shakespeare 
and  a  few  British  classics.'  A  striking  idea  occurs  to 
him  in  one  of  his  sportive  moods.  '  Without  degrading 
our  characters  in  the  least,  we  might  have  some  articles 
from  Britain  and  dispose  of  them  to  immense  advan- 
tage. The  merchants  here  are  greedy  and  blind  to 
their  interests  :  they  sell  little  because  they  sell  so  high. 
Their  general  profit  is  two  hundred  per  cent.'  The 
spectacle  of  Thomas  Campbell  hawking  British  goods 
round  the  German  Empire  would  have  been  sufficiently 
diverting;  but  of  course  it  was  only  another  of  his 
ponderous  pleasantries. 

Nevertheless,  there  was  good  reason  for  his  being 
anxious  about  making  a  little  money.  His  funds 
were  fast  giving  out,  and  at  present  he  did  not  quite 
see  how  he  was  to  replenish  his  purse.  He  makes 
constant  complaint  about  the  uncertainty  of  remit- 
tances, and  in  one  letter  strikes  his  hand  on  his  'sad 
heart'  as  he  thinks  of  himself  starving  far  from  home 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  57 

and  friends.  However,  matters  mended  a  little  for  a 
time :  his  spirits  revived,  he  found  himself  able  to 
work  again  ;  and  the  armistice  having  been  renewed, 
he  made  various  interesting  excursions  into  the  in- 
terior, getting  as  far  as  Munich,  and  returning  by  the 
valley  of  the  Iser.  'I  remember,'  he  says,  speaking 
of  these  excursions  in  a  letter  quoted  by  Washington 
Irving,  'I  remember  how  little  I  valued  the  art  of 
painting  before  I  got  into  the  heart  of  such  impressive 
scenes;  but  in  Germany  I  would  have  given  anything 
to  have  possessed  an  art  capable  of  conveying  ideas 
inaccessible  to  speech  and  writing.  Some  particular 
scenes  were  indeed  rather  overcharged  with  that  degree 
of  the  terrific  which  oversteps  the  sublime ;  and  I  own 
my  flesh  yet  creeps  at  the  recollection  of  spring-waggons 
and  hospitals.  But  the  sight  of  Ingolstadt  in  ruins  or 
Hohenlinden  covered  with  fire,  seven  miles  in  circum- 
ference, were  spectacles  never  to  be  forgotten.' 

The  reference  to  Hohenlinden  here  is  somewhat 
puzzling.  According  to  Beattie,  Campbell  left  Ratisbon 
in  the  beginning  of  October,  and  went  by  way  of  Leipsic 
to  Altona,  where  he  remained  until  his  return  to  England. 
He  was  certainly  at  Altona  in  the  beginning  of  Novem- 
ber, for  his  letters  then  begin  to  date  from  thence.  But 
the  battle  of  Hohenlinden  was  not  fought  until  the  3rd 
of  December,  and  it  is  therefore  clear  that  Campbell, 
unless  he  made  a  journey  of  which  we  have  no  trace, 
could  not  have  seen  Hohenlinden  '  covered  with  fire.' 
Beattie  suggests  that  in  the  passage  just  quoted  Hohen- 
linden may  be  a  slip  for  Landshut  on  the  Iser,  Leip- 
heim,  near  Gunzberg,  or  Donauwert,  where  battles  and 
conflagrations  took  place  during  the  summer  campaign, 
the  effects  of  which  Campbell  may  have  witnessed  after 
his  arrival  on  the  Danube.  He  says  that  he  often  heard 
the  poet  refer  to  *  the  sight  of  Ingolstadt  in  ruins,'  but 
he  never  once  heard  him  describe  the  field  of  Hohen- 
linden.    Of  course  if  he  visited   Munich  at  the  time 


58  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

mentioned  he  may  have  made  a  cursory  survey  of  the 
village ;  but  until  after  the  battle,  travellers  never 
thought  of  going  out  of  their  way  to  see  Hohenlinden. 
It  is  a  pity  that  there  should  be  any  dubiety  upon  this 
matter,  for  our  interest  in  Campbell's  stirring  lines  would 
have  been  heightened  by  the  knowledge  that  he  had 
been  an  eye-witness  of  the  events  which  they  describe. 

The  armistice  which  had  been  renewed  at  Hohen- 
linden on  the  2  8th  of  September  was  for  forty-five  days. 
As  the  time  for  its  termination  approached  Campbell 
thought  it  wise,  in  view  of  a  resumption  of  hostilities, 
to  secure  his  passports,  and  escape  from  Ratisbon. 
There  was  another  determining  point :  his  funds  were 
now  almost  exhausted,  and  he  wanted  to  be  nearer 
home.  He  decided  to  go  to  Hamburg,  whence,  if  re- 
mittances did  not  arrive,  he  could  take  passage  for 
Leith.  Of  his  journey  from  Ratisbon  we  hear  practi- 
cally nothing,  though  in  one  of  his  letters  he  gives  an 
indication  of  his  route  by  mentioning  such  towns  as 
Nuremberg,  Bamberg,  Weimar,  Jena,  Leipsic,  Halle, 
Brunswick,  and  Lunenburg.  In  his  previous  journey 
to  Ratisbon  in  July  he  seems  to  have  followed  the 
course  of  the  Elbe  to  Dresden,  and  thence  proceeded 
through  Zwickau,  Bayreuth,  and  Amberg  to  the  seat  of 
war  on  the  Danube ;  so  that  now  he  was,  as  he  says, 
'  master  of  all  to  be  seen '  in  a  very  considerable  part  of 
the  country. 

When  he  reached  Hamburg  he  found  a  letter  awaiting 
him  from  Richardson  announcing  that  a  '  blessed  double 
edition  '  of  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope  '  had  been  thrown 
off,  thus  entitling  him  to  ;^5o,  according  to  the  under- 
standing with  Mundell.  Relieved  of  all  his  pecuniary 
anxiety  in  this  unexpected  fashion,  Campbell  resolved 
to  remain  abroad  for  the  winter.  He  took  up  his 
quarters  at  Altona,  a  town  near  Hamburg,  which  he 
describes  as  the  pleasantest  place  in  all  Germany.  His 
letters  begin  to  show  a  more  cheerful  spirit.     He  has 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  59 

the  prospect  of  '  useful  and  agreeable  acquaintance,  and 
a  winter  of  useful  activity,'  and  his  portfolio,  hitherto  a 
chaos,  is  soon  to  be  filled  with  '  monsters  and  wonders 
sufficient  to  match  the  pages  of  Bruce  himself.'  One 
of  the  new  acquaintances  promised  to  prove  of  sub- 
stantial advantage  to  him.  A  gentleman  of  family  pre- 
paring for  a  tour  along  the  lower  Danube,  required  a 
travelling  companion,  and  having  been  introduced  to 
Campbell,  he  offered  him  ;^ioo  a  year  to  accompany 
him  and  direct  his  studies.  There  was  to  be  nothing 
like  a  formal  tutorship ;  the  poet  was  merely  to  make 
himself  a  '  respectable  friend  and  useful  companion.' 
Campbell  professed  to  be  at  this  time,  like  Burns,  sorely 
touchable  on  the  score  of  independence,  but  a  man  who 
has  to  content  himself,  as  Campbell  had  now  to  do, 
with  two  meals  a  day,  must  find  it  convenient  to  swallow 
his  pride  occasionally ;  and  Campbell,  after  a  great  deal 
of  epistolary  fuss  about  it,  accepted  the  gentleman's 
offer. 

Unfortunately  the  agreement  was  never  carried  out. 
Beattie's  curt  intimation  is  that  *  sudden  and  important 
changes '  took  place  in  the  views  and  circumstances  of 
the  anticipated  patron.  We  get,  however,  an  inkling  of 
the  real  state  of  the  case  from  a  letter  of  Campbell's  to 
Dr  Anderson,  written  from  London  some  months  later 
— a  letter  which  does  equal  honour  to  the  poet's  kind- 
heartedness  and  modesty.  Speaking  of  his  well-inten- 
tioned friend  he  says : 

That  valuable  and  high-spirited  young  man  was  humbled — after  a 
struggle  which  concealed  misfortunes — to  reveal  his  situation  and  in 
sickness  to  receive  assistance  from  one  whose  advancement  and  re- 
establishment  in  life  he  had  planned  but  a  few  weeks  before,  when 
no  reverse  of  fortune  was  dreaded.  His  situation  required  more 
than  my  resources  were  adequate  to  impart,  but  still  it  prevented 
his  feelings  being  deeply  wounded  by  addressing  strangers.  I  did 
not  regret  my  own  share  of  the  hardships,  but  I  acknowledge  that 
in  those  days  of  darkness  and  distress  I  had  hardly  spirit  to  write  a 


6o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

single  letter.  I  have  often  left  the  sick-bed  of  my  friend  for  a  room 
of  my  own  which  wanted  the  heat  of  a  fire  in  the  month  of  January, 
and  on  the  borders  of  Denmark. 

The  failure  of  this  enterprise  was  obviously  a  great  dis- 
appointment to  Campbell.  The  prospects  of  the  tour 
had  seemed  to  him  peculiarly  enticing,  and  he  never 
ceased  to  deplore  the  necessity  which  led  to  its  being 
abandoned. 

Another  acquaintance  made  at  this  time  happily  bore 
some  fruit.  A  certain  Anthony  M'Cann,  'a  brave 
United  Irishman,'  had,  with  other  unfortunate  fellow- 
countrymen  who  were  engaged  in  the  Rebellion  of  1798, 
taken  refuge  on  the  banks  of  the  Elbe.  Campbell  fell 
in  with  him  and  his  fellow  exiles,  and  passed  a  good 
part  of  his  leisure  in  their  society.  The  literary  result 
was  that  pathetic  if  somewhat  overrated  song,  '  The 
Exile  of  Erin,'  which  Campbell  wrote  after  one  evening 
finding  Tony  M'Cann  more  than  usually  depressed. 
Many  years  later  an  absurd  claim  to  the  authorship  of 
this  song  was  raised  on  behalf  of  an  Irishman  named 
Nugent,  whose  sister  swore  to  having  seen  it  in  her 
brother's  handwriting  before  the  date  of  Campbell's  con- 
tinental visit.  Campbell  was  naturally  pained  by  the 
accusation,  but  he  produced  irrefragable  proofs  of  his 
title  to  the  song ;  and  although  the  charge  of  plagiarism 
was  revived  after  his  death,  there  is  not  the  slightest 
ground  for  doubting  his  authorship.  The  subject  is 
fully  dealt  with  by  Beattie,  but  to  discuss  it  nowadays 
would  be  altogether  superfluous. 

Before  leaving  home,  Campbell  had  entered  into  an 
agreement  with  Mr  Perry  of  the  Morning  Chronicle,  to 
send  him  something  for  his  columns,  and  '  The  Exile  of 
Erin  '  was  published  by  him  on  the  28th  of  January  1801. 
In  a  prefatory  note  the  author  expressed  the  hope  that  the 
song  might  induce  Parliament  to  '  extend  their  benevol- 
ence to  those  unfortunate  men,  whom  delusion  and 
error  have  doomed  to  exile,  but  who  sigh  for  a  return  to 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  6i 

their  native  homes.'  Campbell's  sympathy  with  the 
Irish  exiles  appears  to  have  been  as  strong  as  his 
sympathy  with  the  Poles.  He  adopted  as  his  seal  a 
shamrock  with  the  motto  '  Erin-go-Bragh,'  and  his 
enthusiasm  was  so  flamboyant  that  on  his  arrival  in 
Edinburgh  he  was  actually  in  some  danger  of  being  im- 
prisoned for  conspiring  with  General  Moreau  in  Austria 
and  with  the  Irish  in  Hamburg  to  land  a  French  army 
in  Ireland  !  Campbell  might  well  be  astonished  at  the 
idea  of  '  a  boy  like  me '  conspiring  against  the  British 
Empire.  Subsequently  he  made  valiant  efforts  to 
obtain  leave  for  M'Cann  to  return  home.  These  eflforts 
were  unsuccessful,  but  he  lived  to  see  the  exile 
established  in  Hamburg,  through  a  fortunate  marriage, 
as  one  of  its  wealthiest  citizens. 

During  his  residence  at  Altona,  Campbell,  when  not 
engaged  in  composition,  seems  to  have  busied  himself 
chiefly  in  trying  to  plumb  the  depths  of  German 
philosophy.  He  says — and  he  is  'almost  ashamed  to 
confess  it ' — that  for  twelve  consecutive  weeks  he  did 
nothing  but  study  Kant.  Distrusting  his  own  imperfect 
acquaintance  with  German,  he  took  a  disciple  of  the 
master  through  his  philosophy,  but  found  nothing  to 
reward  the  labour.  His  metaphysics,  he  remarked, 
were  mere  innovations  upon  the  received  meaning  of 
words,  and  conveyed  no  more  instruction  than  the  writ- 
ings of  Duns  Scotus  or  Thomas  Aquinas.  Of  German 
philosophy  in  general  Campbell  entertained  a  very  poor 
opinion.  The  language  in  his  view  was  much  richer  in 
the  field  of  Belles  Lettres ;  and  he  claimed  to  have  got 
more  good  from  reading  Schiller,  Wieland,  and  Burger 
than  from  any  of  the  severer  studies  which  he  under- 
took at  this  time.  Wieland  he  regarded  with  especial 
favour:  he  could  not  conceive  'a  more  perfect  poet' 
Of  Goethe  and  Lessing,  strangely  enough,  he  makes 
practically  no  mention. 

These  details  about  Campbell's  doings  are  gathered 


62  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

mainly  from  his  letters  to  Richardson.  He  was  still 
looking  forward  eagerly  to  the  arrival  of  his  friend ;  and 
when  he  wrote  it  was  generally  with  the  object  of  keep- 
ing his  enthusiasm  awake  by  glowing  descriptions  of 
Hungary,  which  he  characterised  as  a  '  poetical  para- 
dise,' the  country  '  worthy  of  our  best  research,'  all  the 
rest  of  Germany  being  only  so  much  *  vulgar  knowledge.' 
Campbell's  well-laid  schemes  were,  however,  destined  to 
be  upset,  and  in  a  way  which  he  evidently  never  antici- 
pated. A  great  political  crisis  was  at  hand.  England 
had  determined  to  detach  Denmark  from  the  coalition 
by  force  of  arms,  and  on  the  12  th  of  March  the  British 
fleet  left  Yarmouth  Roads  for  the  Sound.  Altona 
being  on  the  Danish  shore  was  no  longer  eligible  as  a 
residence  for  English  subjects,  and  Campbell,  having 
already  had  more  than  enough  of  the  pomp  and  cir- 
cumstance of  war,  resolved  to  return  home.  He  took 
a  berth  in  the  Royal  George,  bound  for  Leith,  and  the 
vessel  dropped  slowly  down  the  river  to  Gluckstadt,  in 
front  of  the  Danish  batteries.  The  passage  proved 
very  tedious,  and  in  the  end,  instead  of  getting  to  Leith, 
the  Royal  George  was  spied  by  a  Danish  privateer 
and  chased  into  Yarmouth.  This  was  early  in  April, 
and  on  the  7th  of  the  month  Campbell  arrived  in 
London,  where,  through  the  good  graces  of  Perry,  he 
was  at  once  made  free  of  the  best  literary  society  of  the 
day. 

In  connection  with  the  continental  sojourn  thus 
hurriedly  terminated,  it  remains  now  to  consider  the 
literary  product  of  the  nine  months'  absence  from 
home.  Like  many  another  poet,  Campbell  will  be 
remembered,  if  he  is  remembered  at  all,  by  his  shorter 
pieces ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  of  these  the 
best  were  written  or  at  any  rate  conceived  on  alien 
soil.  The  '  Exile  of  Erin  '  has  already  been  mentioned. 
'  Hohenlinden '  did  not  appear  until  1802,  but  there 
is  every  reason  for  believing  that  it  was  at  least  outlined 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  63 

shortly  after  the  date  of  the  occurrences  which  it  so 
vividly  pictures.  Gait  tells  an  amusing  story  of  its 
rejection  by  a  Greenock  newspaper  as  not  being  '  up  to 
the  editor's  standard';  but  it  took  the  fancy  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott.  When  Washington  Irving  was  at  Abbots- 
ford  in  181 7,  Scott  observed  to  him:  'And  there's  that 
glorious  little  poem,  too,  of  "  Hohenlinden  " ;  after  he 
[Campbell]  had  written  it  he  did  not   seem  to  think 

much  of  it,  but  considered  some  of  it  d d  drum  and 

trumpet  lines,  I  got  him  to  recite  it  to  me,  and  I 
believe  that  the  delight  I  felt  and  expressed  had  an 
effect  in  inducing  him  to  print  it.'  The  anecdote 
related  by  Scott  in  connection  with  Leyden  is  well- 
known.  Campbell  and  Leyden,  as  we  have  seen,  had 
quarrelled.  When  Scott  repeated  '  Hohenlinden '  to 
Leyden,  the  latter  said :  '  Dash  it,  man,  tell  the  fellow 
I  hate  him,  but,  dash  it,  he  has  written  the  finest  verses 
that  have  been  published  these  fifty  years.'  Scott  did 
not  fail  to  deliver  the  message.  'Tell  Leyden,'  said 
Campbell,  '  that  I  detest  him,  but  that  I  know  the  value 
of  his  critical  approbation,' 

Curiously  enough,  Carlyle,  quoting  in  1814  a  poem 
of  Leyden's  on  the  victory  of  Wellington  at  Assaye, 
remarks  that  'if  there  is  anything  in  existence  that 
surpasses  this  it  must  be  "  Hohenlinden "  —  but 
what's  like  "  Hohenlinden  "  ? '  Leyden's  verses  in 
truth  read  somewhat  tamely,  but  Carlyle's  criticism 
of  poetry  was  not  to  be  depended  upon,  especially 
at  this  early  date,  when  he  preferred  Campbell 
to  either  Byron  or  Scott.  His  impassioned  liking 
for  '  Hohenlinden '  was,  however,  well  justified  by  its 
merits.  It  has  been  described  as  the  only  representa- 
tion of  a  modern  battle  which  possesses  either  interest 
or  sublimity.  Sublimity  is  a  word  of  which  we  are  not 
particularly  fond  in  these  days,  perhaps  because  it  was 
so  freely  used  by  critics  a  hundred  years  ago.  We 
prefer  simplicity ;  and  it    is    surely   the   simplicity    of 


64  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

'  Hohenlinden '  which  mainly  accounts  for  its  effect. 
Each  stanza  is  a  picture — not  a  finished  etching,  but 
rather  an  '  impression ' ;  no  dehcate  shades  of  colour, 
but  broad  strokes  of  red  and  black  on  white.  No  word 
is  wasted,  no  scene  is  elaborated ;  and  if  what  is  de- 
picted is  all  pretty  obvious — well,  blood  is  red,  and 
gunpowder  is  sulphurous,  and  there  is  little  room  for 
invention.  To  call  it  great  art  would  be  absurd ;  it  is 
excellent  scene-painting. 

Next  to  '  Hohenlinden '  among  the  pieces  of  this 
period  must  be  placed  '  Ye  Mariners  of  England '  and 
'The  Soldier's  Dream.'  The  first  was  written  at  Altona 
when  rumours  of  England's  intention  to  break  up  the 
coalition  began  to  spread.  It  was  printed  by  Perry 
above  the  signature  of  '  Amator  Patriae,'  with  an  inti-na- 
tion  that  it  was  avowedly  an  imitation  of  the  seventeenth 
century  sea-song,  'Ye  Mariners  of  England,'  which 
Campbell  used  to  sing  at  musical  soirees  in  Edinburgh. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  stirring  of  his  war  pieces.  '  The 
Soldier's  Dream,'  beginning  '  Our  bugles  sang  truce,' 
was  not  given  to  the  public  until  the  spring  of  1804, 
but  it  is  generally  believed  to  have  been  written  at 
Altona,  and  in  any  case  it  was  inspired  by  the  events 
which  the  poet  witnessed  during  his  residence  at  Ratis- 
bon.  Several  other  pieces  were  composed  or  revised 
at  this  time,  but  they  are  of  little  importance.  Byron 
declared  that  the  *  Lines  on  leaving  a  Scene  in  Bavaria ' 
were  '  perfectly  magnificent,'  but  the  praise  is  grotesquely 
extravagant.  The  lines  certainly  bear  traces  of  genuine 
feeling,  but  the  piece  as  a  whole  is  obscure  and  un- 
finished. 

The  famous  '  Battle  of  the  Baltic '  was  not  published 
until  1809,  but  as  it  was  suggested  to  Campbell  by  the 
sight  of  the  Danish  batteries  as  he  sailed  past  them  on 
his  way  home  from  Hamburg,  it  will  be  convenient  to 
deal  with  it  here.  The  subject  of  the  poem  is  known  in 
history  as  the  Battle  of  Copenhagen,  which  was  fought 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  65 

on  the  2nd  of  April  1801.  Campbell  sent  a  first  draft 
of  it  to  Scott  in  1805.  This  draft  consisted  of  twenty- 
seven  stanzas,  while  the  published  version  has  only  eight. 
It  has  been  remarked  that  if  the  original  form  had  been 
adhered  to,  'The  Battle  of  the  Baltic'  might  have 
become  a  popular  ballad  for  a  time  and  then  been 
forgotten,  whereas,  in  its  condensed  form,  it  is  one  of 
the  finest  and  most  enduring  war-songs  in  the  language. 
Its  metre,  which  the  Edi?iburgh  Review  thought  'strange 
and  unfortunate,'  is  really  one  of  its  merits.  The  lines  of 
unequal  length  relieve  it  of  monotony ;  the  sharp,  short 
final  line  of  each  stanza  being  indeed  an  excellent 
invention.  The  poem  has  defects  in  plenty,  which  have 
been  often  enough  pointed  out :  not  a  stanza  would 
pass  muster  to-day ;  but  it  would  be  ungracious  to 
criticise  too  severely  one  of  the  few  vigorous  battle 
pieces  we  have. 


E 


CHAPTER  V 

WANDERINGS MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT  IN  LONDON 

During  his  sojourn  on  the  Continent  Campbell  had 
suffered  incredible  hardships,  hardships  such  as  he 
hesitated  to  divulge  even  to  his  friends.  Now  he  was 
to  experience  an  agreeable  change — a  transition  from 
•the  tedium  of  cold  and  gloomy  evenings,  unconsoled 
by  the  comforts  of  life,  and  from  the  barbarity  of  savages 
(where  an  Englishman  was  not  sure  of  his  life)  to  the 
elegant  society  of  London  and  pleasures  of  every  descrip- 
tion.' He  appears  to  have  landed  with  little  more  than 
the  Scotsman's  proverbial  half-crown  in  his  pocket,  but 
Perry,  a  Scot  like  himself,  proved  the  friend  in  need. 
'  I  will  be  all  that  you  could  wish  me  to  be,'  he  said, 
and  he  kept  his  word.  Calling  upon  him  one  day, 
Campbell  was  shown  a  letter  from  Lord  Holland,  in- 
viting him  to  dine  at  the  King  of  Clubs,  a  survival  of 
the  institution  where  Johnson  used  to  lay  down  his 
little  senate  laws.  'Thither  with  his  lordship,'  says 
Campbell,  writing  in  1837,  'I  accordingly  repaired,  and 
it  was  an  era  in  my  life.  There  I  met,  in  all  their  glory 
and  feather.  Mackintosh,  Rogers,  the  Smiths,  Sydney, 
and  others.  In  the  retrospect  of  a  long  life  I  know  no 
man  whose  acuteness  of  intellect  gave  me  a  higher  idea  of 
human  nature  than  Mackintosh;  and  without  disparaging 
his  benevolence — for  he  had  an  excellent  heart — I  may 
say  that  I  never  saw  a  man  who  so  reconciled  me  to 
hereditary  artistocracy  like  the  benignant  Lord  Holland.' 
Of  Lady  Holland,  Campbell  had  an  equally  high  opinion. 
She  was,  he  said,  a   'formidable  woman,  cleverer  by 

66 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  67 

several   degrees  than   Buonaparte,'   whose  name,  it  is 
interesting  to  note,  occurs  again  and  again  in  his  letters. 

Among  the  other  friends  he  made  at  this  time  were 
Dr  Burney  and  Sir  John  Moore,  Mrs  Inchbald  and 
Mrs  Barbauld,  J.  P.  Kemble,  and  Mrs  Siddons.  From 
a  man  so  notoriously  proud  and  reserved  as  Kemble 
he  says  he  looked  for  little  notice ;  but  Kemble's  be- 
haviour at  their  first  meeting  undeceived  him,  *  He 
spoke  with  me  in  another  room,  and,  with  a  grace 
more  enchanting  than  the  favour  itself,  presented  me 
with  the  freedom  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre.  His  manner 
was  so  expressive  of  dignified  benevolence  that  I 
thought  myself  transported  to  the  identity  of  Horatio, 
with  my  friend  Hamlet  giving  me  a  welcome.'  Kemble's 
condescending  kindness  he  ill-requited  in  181 7  with  a 
set  of  wordy,  inflated  'valedictory  stanzas,'  in  which 
he  displayed  all  his  poetical  apparatus  of  'conscious 
bosoms,'  'classic  dome,'  'supernal  light,'  and  so  forth. 
Mrs  Siddons  he  describes  as  a  woman  of  the  first  order, 
who  sang  some  airs  of  her  own  composition  with  in- 
comparable sweetness.  In  Rogers  he  found  '  one  of 
the  most  refined  characters,  whose  manners  and  writing 
may  be  said  to  correspond.'  Everybody  and  every- 
thing, in  fact,  delighted  him  ;  the  pains  of  the  past 
were  forgotten,  and  the  future  began  to  look  brighter 
than  it  had  ever  done  before. 

Unfortunately,  just  as  he  had  got  into  this  happy 
state  of  mind,  he  was  startled  by  the  news  of  his 
father's  death.  He  had  heard  nothing  of  the  old 
man's  illness,  and  bitterly  reproached  himself  for  hav- 
ing left  him  in  his  last  days.  It  was,  however,  some 
comfort  to  him  to  learn  that  Dr  Anderson  had  watched 
at  his  bedside,  and,  when  all  was  over,  had  seen  his 
remains  laid  reverently  in  the  cemetery  of  St  John's 
Chapel.  He  died  as  he  had  lived,  pious  and  placid, 
full  of  religious  hope  as  of  years.  Campbell  went 
home  to  console  his  mother  and  sisters,   and  to  set 


68  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

their  affairs  in  order.  His  father's  annuity  from  the 
Glasgow  Merchants'  Society  died  with  him  ;  the  sisters 
were  good-looking  but  valetudinarian,  and  Campbell 
could  only  promise  that  if  a  new  edition  of  'The 
Pleasures  of  Hope'  succeeded  he  would  furnish  a 
house  in  which  they  might  keep  boarders  and  teach 
school.  Once  in  the  house,  he  told  them,  they  would 
have  to  trust  in  Providence. 

The  prospect  certainly  did  not  look  promising,  either 
for  Campbell  or  his  dependents.  A  thousand  subscribers 
were  required  to  make  an  edition  of  '  The  Pleasures  of 
Hope '  safe  and  profitable,  and  as  that  number  was  not 
to  be  obtained  in  the  north,  Campbell  was  advised  to 
go  to  London  to  canvass  a  larger  public.  Meanwhile 
he  had  to  make  both  ends  meet,  and  in  default  of  pre- 
cise information  we  must  surmise  that  he  turned  out  a 
deal  of  joyless,  uncongenial  work.  Nor,  with  all  his 
industry,  did  he  succeed  in  relieving  his  straitened 
circumstances.  The  whole  year  was  one  of  great 
privation,  when  the  common  necessaries  of  life  were 
being  sold  at  an  exorbitant  price,  and  'meal-mob' 
rioters  were  parading  the  streets  and  breaking  into  the 
bakers'  shops.  People  who  had  much  more  substantial 
resources  than  Campbell  felt  the  temporary  embarrass- 
ment. "What  Campbell  should  have  done  it  would  not 
be  easy  to  say ;  what  he  did  do  it  would  be  quite  easy 
to  censure.  In  spite  of  all  his  fine  friends,  for  all  the 
lavish  promises  of  Perry  and  others,  he  was  misguided 
enough  to  borrow  money — on  '  Judaic  terms ' — with,  of 
course,  the  inevitable  result.  Beattie  does  not  mention 
the  sum  borrowed,  but  he  says  it  was  nearly  doubled 
by  enormous  interest,  and  could  only  be  repaid  by 
excessive  application.  Campbell  was  always  notori- 
ously careless  in  money  matters,  and  even  the  concern 
he  naturally  felt  as  a  devoted  son  and  brother  can 
hardly  excuse  the  imprudence  with  which  he  added  to 
his  obligations  at  this  period.     But  prudence,  as  Cole- 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  69 

ridge  once  pointed  out,  is  not  usually  a  plant  of  poetic 
growth. 

In  the  midst  of  all  his  cares  and  anxieties,  Campbell 
found  some  solace  in  the  society  of  such  literary  and 
other  friends  as  the  Rev.  Archibald  Alison — the  '  Man 
of  Taste' — Professor  Dugald  Stewart,  Lord  Jeffrey, 
Dr  Anderson,  and  the  family  of  Grahames,  of  whom 
the  author  of  'The  Sabbath'  was  the  best  known 
member.  The  fact  of  his  having  been  at  the  seat  of 
war  gave  his  conversation  a  peculiar  interest,  and  his 
pilgrimage  generally  was  regarded  as  a  subject  of  no 
little  curiosity.  His  old  pupil.  Lord  Cunninghame, 
remarks  upon  the  change  which  his  continental  visit 
had  evidently  effected  in  his  view  of  public  affairs  and 
the  accepted  order  of  things  at  home.  Whatever  youth- 
ful, hot-headed  Republican  notions  he  may  have  in- 
dulged before  he  went  abroad,  we  gather  that  he  had 
come  back  considerably  sobered  down,  and  now  he 
deigned  to  express — he  was  still  very  young  ! — a  decided 
preference  for  the  British  Constitution. 

But  literature  was  after  all  of  more  importance  to 
him  than  politics.  Such  plans  as  he  had  formed  at 
this  time  he  freely  discussed  with  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
from  whom  he  received  much  encouragement  and  good 
advice.  Lord  Minto  was  another  friend  who  proved  of 
value.  Minto  had  just  returned  from  Vienna,  where 
he  had  been  acting  as  Envoy  Extraordinary,  and  with 
the  view  perhaps  of  hearing  his  version  of  recent  events 
in  Germany,  he  invited  the  poet  to  his  house  at  Castle 
Minto,  some  forty-five  miles  from  Edinburgh.  The 
visit  turned  out  in  every  way  agreeable,  and  when 
Campbell  left,  it  was  with  the  understanding  that  he 
would  join  Lord  Minto  in  London  in  the  course  of  the 
parliamentary  session.  A  London  visit  promised  many 
advantages,  among  them  the  opportunity  of  securing 
subscribers  for  the  new  edition  of  'The  Pleasures  of 
Hope,'  and  Campbell  returned  to  Edinburgh  to  make 


70  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

his  preparations.  He  travelled  overland,  spending  a 
few  days  in  Liverpool  with  Currie,  the  biographer  of 
Burns,  and  while  there  convulsing  his  friends  by  the 
nervousness  he  displayed  on  horseback.  When  he 
reached  London  he  found  that  Minto  had  prepared  a 
'  poet's  room '  for  him  at  his  house  in  Hanover  Square, 
and  there  he  took  up  his  residence  for  the  season, 
giving,  it  is  understood,  occasional  service  as  secretary 
in  return  for  the  hospitality. 

He  says  he  found  Minto's  conversation  very  in- 
structive, but  Minto  was  a  Tory  of  the  Burke  school, 
which  Campbell  regarded  as  inimical  to  political  pro- 
gress. Campbell  naively  remarks  in  one  of  his  letters 
that  at  an  early  period  of  their  acquaintance  they  had 
a  discussion  on  the  subject  of  politics,  when  he  thought 
of  giving  Minto  his  political  confession  of  faith.  If  it 
should  not  meet  with  Minto's  approval,  then  the  intimacy 
might  end.  Campbell  does  not  appear  to  have  re- 
hearsed his  whole  political  creed,  but  he  went  so  far 
as  to  tell  Minto  that  he  was  a  Republican,  and  that 
his  opinion  of  the  practicability  of  a  Republican  form 
of  government  had  not  been  materially  affected  by  all 
that  had  happened  in  the  French  Revolution.  Lord 
Minto  was  much  too  sensible  a  man  to  disturb  himself 
about  the  political  views  of  his  overweening  young 
guest,  which,  with  a  gentle  sarcasm  apparently  un- 
observed by  the  poet,  he  set  down  as  'candid  errors 
of  judgment.'  Still,  there  must  have  been  some  lively 
debates  around  the  table  now  and  again.  The  corre- 
spondence makes  special  mention  of  Touissant,  the  negro 
chieftain  of  San  Domingo,  as  a  subject  of  frequent 
wrangling.  Campbell  looked  upon  Touissant  as  a 
second  Kosciusko,  while  Minto  could  only  dwell  upon 
the  horrors  that  were  likely  to  follow  upon  his  achieve- 
ments in  the  cause  of  so-called  freedom. 

But  these  heated  discussions  were  confined  mainly 
to  the  morning  hours.     Campbell's  chief  concerns   lay 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  71 

in  other  directions.  Lord  Minto  left  him  very  much 
master  of  his  own  time,  and  his  literary  friendships 
were  now  revived  and  extended  at  Perry's  table,  at  the 
King  of  Clubs,  and  elsewhere.  Minto  introduced  him 
to  Wyndham,  whom  he  describes  as  '  a  Moloch  among 
the  fallen  war-makers,'  to  Lord  Malmesbury  and  Lord 
Pelham — '  plain,  affable  men ' — and  to  others.  He 
met  Malthus,  whose  theories  he  cordially  supported, 
and  found  him  'most  ingenious  and  pleasant,  very 
sensible  and  good.'  He  was  much  flattered  by  the 
friendly  notice  of  Mrs  Siddons,  and  when  the  Kembles 
admitted  him  to  their  family  circle,  he  announced  in  a 
burst  of  flunkeyism  that  he  had  attained  the  acme  of  his 
ambitions.  With  Telford  the  engineer,  one  of  his 
Edinburgh  patrons,  and  a  genuine  if  not  very  judicious 
lover  of  poetry,  he  spent  many  of  his  leisure  hours. 
Telford  was  intimate  with  the  Secretary  of  State,  and 
in  one  of  his  letters  he  hints  to  Alison  that  he  may  take 
some  steps  to  direct  the  Minister's  practical  attention 
to  the  *  young  Pope.' 

Whether  Telford  carried  out  his  intention  does  not 
appear  ;  but  at  any  rate  there  was  no  patronising  of  the 
young  Pope,  who  continued  to  occupy  his  poet's  room, 
and  presently  began  to  tell  his  friends  in  the  north  that 
he  ardently  longed  to  get  away  from  his  present  scene 
of  'hurry  and  absurdity,'  to  the  refined  and  select 
society  of  Edinburgh.  Many  young  fellows  in  his 
position  would  have  counted  themselves  lucky  at  being 
housed  in  such  distinguished  quarters;  but  Campbell 
was  in  a  low  state  of  health  at  the  time,  and  that  doubt- 
less accounted  for  his  aggravated  fits  of  despondency. 
In  any  case  he  had  his  wish  about  returning  to  Edin- 
burgh. At  the  close  of  the  parliamentary  session 
Minto  started  for  Scotland,  taking  Campbell  with  him, 
and  by  the  end  of  June  he  had  exchanged  his  poet's 
room  for  the  much  humbler  abode  of  his  mother  and 
sisters  in  Alison  Square. 


72  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

During  this  second  visit  to  London  he  seems  to  have 
written  very  little,  but  what  he  did  write  has  retained  at 
least  a  certain  school-book  popularity.  There  was 
'  Hohenlinden,'  finished  at  this  time,  and  of  which  we 
have  already  spoken,  and  there  was  '  Lochiel's  Warn- 
ing,' a  '  furious  war  prophecy,'  in  the  composition  of 
which  he  says  he  became  greatly  agitated  and  excited. 
'  Lochiel,'  like  *  Hohenlinden,'  had  been  intended  for 
the  new  edition  of  his  poems,  but,  at  the  unexplained 
request  of  his  friends,  both  pieces  were  printed  anony- 
mously and  dedicated  to  Alison.  Both  had  run  the 
gauntlet  of  private  criticism  before  being  submitted  to 
the  public.  When  the  rough  draft  of  *  Lochiel '  was 
handed  to  Minto — who  with  Currie  and  other  friends 
criticised  several  successive  drafts — he  made  some  ob- 
jection to  the  'vulgarity'  of  hanging,  and  this  objection 
was  supported  later  on  when  the  manuscript  was  passed 
about  in  Edinburgh.  But  Campbell  was  determined  to 
show  how  his  hero  might  swing  with  sufficient  dignity 
in  a  good  cause ;  and  his  objectors  were  silenced 
when  he  demonstrated  to  them  that  Lochiel  had  a 
brother  who  actually  suffered  death  by  means  of  the 
rope. 

Of  course  his  friends  were  not  all  so  hypercritical  as 
Minto.  When  he  read  '  Lochiel '  to  Mrs  Dugald  Stewart, 
she  laid  her  hand  on  his  head  with  the  remark  that  it 
would  bear  another  wreath  of  laurel  yet.  Campbell 
said  this  made  a  stronger  impression  upon  him  than  if 
she  had  spoken  in  a  strain  of  the  loftiest  laudation; 
nay,  he  declared  it  to  have  been  one  of  the  principal 
incidents  in  his  life  that  gave  him  confidence  in  his  own 
powers.  Telford  was  even  more  enthusiastic.  '  I  am 
absolutely  vain  of  Thomas  Campbell,'  he  says  in  a 
letter  to  Alison.  '  There  never  was  anything  like  him 
— he  is  the  very  spirit  of  Parnassus.  Have  you  seen 
his  "  Lochiel "  ?  He  will  surpass  everything  ancient  or 
modern — your  Pindars,  your  Drydens,  and  your  Grays. 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  73 

I  expect  nothing  short  of  a  Scotch  Milton,  a  Shake- 
speare, or  something  more  than  either.' 

To  transcribe  such  stuff  is  really  a  tax  on  the 
biographer's  patience.  It  was  in  this  atmosphere  of 
fooUsh  adulation  that  Campbell  spent  those  very  years 
when  a  young  man  most  needs  the  tonic  air  of  rigorous 
criticism.  Such  coddling  and  cossetting  never  yet  made 
a  poet.  Nothing  that  Campbell  ever  did  justifies  a 
panegyric  like  that  just  quoted ;  least  of  all  is  it  justified 
by  '  Lochiel's  Warning,'  a  bit  of  first-rate  fustian  which 
would  assuredly  be  forgotten  but  for  its  '  Coming  events 
cast  their  shadows  before,'  and  a  certain  rhetorical 
fluency,  which — with  its  convenient  length — make  it  a 
favourite  with  teachers  of  elocution.  Campbell  told 
Minto  that  he  was  tempted  to  throw  the  poem  away  in 
vexation  at  his  inability  to  perfect  it,  and  Scott  himself 
had  to  insist  on  his  retaining  what  were  considered  its 
finest  lines.  A  writer,  above  all  a  poet,  ought  surely  to 
know — as  Tennyson,  as  Stevenson  knew — when  he  has 
done  a  good  thing ;  when  he  does  not  know,  his  friends 
are  ill-advised  in  keeping  his  effusions  from  the  flames, 
Scott,  with  his  usual  generosity,  called  the  idea  of  the 
line  quoted  above  a  'noble  thought,  nobly  expressed.' 
The  thought  is  Schiller's ;  and  whatever  '  nobility '  there 
may  be  in  the  expression  is  spoilt  in  a  great  measure  by 
the  jingle  of  the  first  line  of  the  couplet — 

'Tis  the  sunset  of  life  gives  me  mystical  lore. 

Even  if  this  were  not  the  case,  its  cachet  of  nobility 
could  hardly  survive  the  ridiculous  story  told  by  Beattie. 
Campbell,  according  to  this  circumstantial  tale,  was  at 
Minto.  He  had  gone  early  to  bed  and  was  reflecting 
on  the  Wizard's  warning  when  he  fell  asleep.  During 
the  night  he  suddenly  awoke  repeating :  *  Events  to 
come  cast  their  shadows  before.'  It  was  the  very  image 
for  which  he  had  been  waiting  a  week. 


74  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

He  rang  the  bell  more  than  once  with  increased  force.  At  last, 
surprised  and  annoyed  by  so  unseasonable  a  peal,  the  servant 
appeared.  The  poet  was  sitting  with  one  foot  on  the  bed  and  the 
other  on  the  floor,  with  an  air  of  mixed  impatience  and  inspiration. 
•  Sir,  are  you  ill  ?  '  inquired  the  servant.  '  111 !  never  better  in  my 
life.  Leave  the  candle  and  oblige  me  with  a  cup  of  tea  as  soon  as 
possible.'  He  then  started  to  his  feet,  seized  hold  of  the  pen,  and 
wrote  down  the  '  happy  thought,'  but  as  he  wrote  changed  the 
words  '  events  to  come '  into  '  coming  events,'  as  it  now  stands  in 
the  text. 

This  is  not  exactly  a  case  oi  mons  partiirit  fiiurem*,  it  is 
more  like  the  woman  in  the  parable  who  beat  up  all  her 
friends  to  rejoice  with  her  in  the  discovery  of  her 
trinket ;  still  more  like  the  proud  bantam  who  disturbs 
the  whole  neighbourhood  for  joy  that  a  chick  has  been 
egged  into  the  world.  It  would  be  difficult  indeed  to 
find  a  more  striking  example  of  much  ado  about  nothing. 

Sometime  during  the  month  of  August  Campbell  had 
an  intimation  from  Lord  Minto  that  he  was  coming  to 
Edinburgh,  and  would  expect  the  poet  to  accompany 
him  when  he  went  south.  Minto  came,  and  Campbell 
left  with  him.  In  a  letter  to  Scott  Campbell  says  he 
must  make  the  stay  a  short  one,  because  he  has  arranged 
to  take  lessons  in  drawing  from  Nasmyth,  but  of  that 
scheme  nothing  further  is  heard.  Redding  avers  that 
Campbell  could  not  use  a  pencil  in  the  delineation  of  the 
simplest  natural  object,  and  instances  an  attempt  to 
draw  a  cat  which  looked  very  like  a  crocodile.  On  the 
way  to  Minto  the  party  halted  at  Melrose  to  allow 
Campbell  to  inspect  the  Abbey,  with  which  he  says  he 
was  pleased  to  enthusiasm.  Scotland  in  the  eleventh 
century,  he  exclaims  sarcastically,  could  erect  the  Abbey 
of  Melrose,  and  in  the  nineteenth  could  not  finish  the 
College  of  Edinburgh.  He  comments  upon  the  fine, 
wild,  yet  light  outline  of  its  architecture,  and  says  his 
mind  was  filled  with  romance  at  beholding  '  in  the  very 
form  and  ornaments  of  the  pile,  proofs  of  its  forest  origin 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  75 

that  lead  us  back  to  the  darkest  of  Gothic  ages.'  When 
they  arrived  at  Minto  they  were  welcomed  by  Scott, 
among  other  visitors ;  and  Campbell  retired  early  to 
spend  the  evening  with  Hawkins'  Life  of  Johnson,  in 
which  he  found  'some  valuable  stuff  in  the  midst  of 
superabundant  nonsense.' 

On  the  whole,  he  does  not  seem  to  have  been  very 
happy  at  Minto  during  this  visit.  Lord  Minto's  polite- 
ness, he  tells  Alison,  only  twitches  him  with  the  sin  of 
ingratitude  for  not  being  more  contented  under  his 
hospitable  roof.  But  a  lord's  house,  fashionable 
strangers,  luxuriously-furnished  saloons,  and  winding 
galleries  where  he  can  hardly  find  his  own  room,  make 
him  as  wretched  as  he  can  be,  '  without  being  a  tutor. 
Everyone,  it  is  true,  treats  him  civilly ;  the  servants  are 
assiduous  in  setting  him  right  when  he  loses  his  way ; 
but  degraded  as  he  is  to  a  state  of  second  childhood 
in  this  '  new  world,'  it  would  be  insulting  his  fallen 
dignity  to  smile  hysterically  and  pretend  to  be  happy. 
All  of  which  is  sheer  fudge — nothing  more  than  the 
splenetic  utterance  of  an  enfant  gate. 

Happily,  Campbell  had  business  at  home,  and  there 
was  no  reason  why  he  should  sit  by  the  waters  of  Minto 
and  sigh  when  he  thought  of  Edinburgh.  The  new 
edition  of  his  poems  was  now  in  the  press,  and  he 
returned  to  the  capital  to  revise  the  proofs.  While  he 
was  thus  engaged,  other  work  of  a  less  agreeable  kind 
divided  his  attention.  An  Edinburgh  bookseller  had 
commissioned  him  to  prepare  '  The  Annals  of  Great 
Britain,'  a  sort  of  continuation  of  Smollett,  which 
he  contracted  to  finish  in  three  volumes  octavo,  at 
;^ioo  per  volume.  The  work  was  to  be  'anonymous 
and  consequently  inglorious ' — a  labour,  in  fact,  '  little 
superior  to  compilation,  and  more  connected  with  profit 
than  reputation.'  It  was  a  distinct  drop  for  the  author 
of  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope,'  and  he  knew  it.  Indeed, 
such  was  his  sensitiveness  on  the  point  that  he  bound 


76  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

his  employer  to  secrecy,  and  tried  to  hide  the  fact  from 
even  his  most  intimate  friends.  One  cannot  help  com- 
paring this  behaviour  with  that  of  Tennyson  ;  Campbell 
falling,  even  in  his  own  estimation,  below  his  very 
moderate  level,  deliberately  doing  work  of  which  he 
was  ashamed ;  Tennyson,  perhaps  going  to  the  other 
extreme,  sacrificing  his  worldly  happiness  and,  it  is 
to  be  feared,  in  part  the  health  of  the  woman  he 
loved,  to  the  pursuit  of  his  ideals.  But  Tennyson  was 
a  poet. 

'  The  Annals  of  Great  Britain '  was  not  published  until 
some  years  after  this,  but  the  book  may  be  dismissed  at 
once.  It  was  little  more  than  a  dry  catalogue  of  events 
chronologically  arranged,  a  mere  piece  of  journeyman's 
work  done  to  turn  a  penny,  without  accuracy  of  informa- 
tion or  the  slightest  regard  for  style.  Campbell  told  Minto 
that  the  publisher  did  not  desire  that  he  should  make 
the  work  more  than  passable,  and  it  is  barely  passable. 
It  is  quite  forgotten  now ;  indeed,  a  writer  in  Frase/s 
Magazine  for  November  1844  declares  that  even  then 
the  most  intelligent  bookseller  in  London  was  unaware 
of  its  existence.  Redding  says  that  the  author's  own 
library  was  innocent  of  a  copy. 

^Vhile  Campbell  was  hammering  away  at  this 
perfunctory  performance  in  Edinburgh,  some  whisper 
of  honours  and  independence  awaiting  him  in  London 
seems  to  have  reached  his  ears.  It  was  only  a  whisper, 
but  the  time  had  clearly  come  when  he  must  make  up 
his  mind  once  for  all  about  the  future.  By  his  own 
admission,  poetry  had  now  deserted  him ;  he  had  lost 
both  the  faculty  and  the  inchnation  for  writing  it.  Dull 
prose,  he  saw,  must  henceforward  be  his  stand-by.  As 
a  market  for  dull  prose,  London  undoubtedly  ranked 
before  Edinburgh ;  and  so  he  took  the  plunge,  though 
he  had  no  fixed  engagement  in  London,  no  actual 
business  there  except  to  superintend  the  printing  of  his 
poems.      It  was  a  bold   venture,   but    in    the    end    it 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  77 

probably  turned  out  as  well  as  any  other  venture  would 
have  done. 

On  the  way  south  he  was  again  the  guest  of  Currie  at 
Liverpool,  where  he  remained  '  drinking  with  this  one 
and  dining  with  that  one '  for  ten  days.  Then  he  visited 
the  pottery  district  of  Staffordshire,  where  an  old  college 
friend  was  employed.  It  was  his  first  real  experience  of 
the  'chaos  of  smoke,'  and  he  did  not  like  it.  The 
country,  he  remarked,  for  all  its  furnaces,  was  not  a 
*  hot-bed  of  letters,'  though  he  had  met  with  a  character 
who  enjoyed  a  reputation  for  learning  by  carrying  a 
Greek  Testament  to  church.  The  people  were  a  heavy, 
plodding,  unrefined  race,  but  they  had  good  hearts,  and 
what  was  just  as  important,  they  gave  good  dinners. 
'These  honest  folks  showed  me  all  the  symptoms  of 
their  affection  that  could  be  represented  by  the  symbols 
of  meat  and  drink,  and  if  ale,  wine,  bacon,  and  pudding 
could  have  made  up  a  stranger's  paradise  I  should  have 
found  it  among  the  Potteries.'  One  untoward  thing 
happened :  Campbell  lost  his  wig.  For  it  should  have 
been  mentioned  that  just  before  he  left  Edinburgh, 
finding  that  his  hair  was  getting  alarmingly  thin,  he  had 
adopted  the  peruke,  which  he  continued  to  wear  for  the 
rest  of  his  life.  A  bewigged  poet  of  twenty-five  must 
have  been  a  somewhat  singular  spectacle  in  those  days, 
but  Campbell  made  up  for  the  antiquated  head-gear  by 
a  notable  spruceness  in  other  ways.  He  wore  a  blue 
coat  with  bright,  gilt  buttons,  a  white  waistcoat  and 
cravat,  buff  nankeens  and  white  stockings,  with  shoes 
and  silver  buckles — a  perfect  scheme  of  colour. 

In  this  gay  attire,  though  '  agonised '  by  the  want  of 
his  wig,  he  arrived  in  London  on  the  7th  of  March 
(1802).  Telford  at  once  took  charge  of  him  by  making 
him  his  guest  at  the  Salopian  Hotel,  Charing  Cross. 
Of  Telford's  admiration  for  Campbell  as  a  poet  we  have 
already  learnt  something ;  his  opinion  of  Campbell  as  a 
man  was  apparently  not  quite  so  enthusiastic.     Nothing 


78  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

is  recorded  of  Campbell's  conduct  during  the  former 
visits  to  London,  but  what  are  we  to  infer  from  the  fact 
that  Telford  and  Alison  now  united  to  'advise  and 
remonstrate  with  the  young  poet,  at  a  moment  when  he 
was  again  surrounded  by  all  the  seductive  allurements  of 
a  great  capital '  ?  Alison  sent  him  a  letter  of  paternal 
counsel  for  the  regulation  of  his  life  and  studies ;  and 
Telford  confided  to  Alison  that  he  had  asked  Campbell 
to  live  with  him  in  order  to  have  him  constantly  in 
check.  If  Campbell  really  had  any  leaning  towards 
social  or  other  extravagances,  it  was  promptly  counter- 
acted by  an  event  of  which  we  shall  have  to  speak 
presently. 

Meanwhile,  Telford  does  not  appear  to  have  helped 
him  much  by  introducing  him  to  'all  sorts  of  novelty.' 
In  fact,  if  we  may  believe  himself,  Campbell  did  not 
take  at  all  kindly  to  London  and  its  ways.  Life  there 
is  '  absolutely  a  burning  fever ' ;  he  hates  its  unnatural 
and  crowded  society ;  it  robs  him  of  both  health  and 
composure.  He  cannot  settle  himself  to  anything ;  he 
has  one  eternal  round  of  invitations,  and  has  got  into 
a  style  of  living  which  suits  neither  his  purse  nor  his 
inclination.  Sleep  has  become  a  stranger  to  him ; 
every  morning  finds  him  with  a  headache.  Study  and 
composition  are  out  of  the  question.  He  sits  '  under 
the  ear-crashing  influence  of  ten  thousand  chariot 
wheels  ' ;  when  night  comes  on  he  has  no  solace  but 
his  pipe,  and  he  drops  into  bed  like  an  old  sinner 
dropping  into  the  grave. 

Campbell  was  very  likely  homesick,  but  his  corre- 
spondence and  the  evidence  of  his  intimates  put  it 
beyond  doubt  that  he  was  not  cut  out  for  society. 
Indeed  he  expressly  admits  it  himself.  Fashionable 
folks,  he  exclaims  in  one  of  his  letters,  have  a  slang 
of  talk  among  themselves  as  unintelligible  to  ordinary 
mortals  as  the  lingo  of  the  gipsies,  and  perhaps  not  so 
amusing  if  one  did  understand  it.     A  man  of  his  lowly 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  79 

breeding  feels  in  their  company  something  of  what 
Burke  calls  proud  humility,  or  rather  humble  contempt. 
As  for  conversation  with  these  minions  of  le  beau  fnonde, 
he  says  it  is  not  worth  courting  since  their  minds  are 
not  so  much  filled  as  dilated.  This  was  another  of 
Campbell's  many  foolish  utterances  of  the  kind.  It 
must  have  been  made  in  a  fit  of  spleen,  for  Campbell, 
like  Burns,  could  dinner  very  comfortably  with  a  lord 
when  the  meeting  was  likely  to  favour  his  own  interests. 
Johnson  declared  of  Charing  Cross  that  the  full  tide 
of  human  existence  was  there,  but  Campbell  had 
nothing  of  Johnson's  affection  for  the  streets.  He 
objected  to  the  noise  because  it  made  conversation 
impossible,   or  at  least  difficult.     Hence  it  was  that, 

*  the  roaring  vortex '  having  proved  unendurable  to  him, 
he  now  changed  his  quarters  to  a  dingy  den  of  his  own 
at  61  South  Molton  Street.  Here  he  went  on  pre- 
paring the  '  Annals  '  and  the  new  edition  of  his  poems, 
toiling  with  the  stolid  regularity  of  the  mill-horse  for 
ten  hours  a  day.  The  new  edition  of  the  poems  was 
published  in  the  beginning  of  June,  when  his  spirits 
had  sunk  to  'the  very  ground-fioor  of  despondency.' 
It  was  a  handsome  quarto,  and  the  printing,  in  the 
author's  opinion,  was  so  well  done  that,  except  one 
splendid  book  from  Paris,  dedicated  to  '  that  villain 
Buonaparte,'  there  was  nothing  finer  in  Europe.  It 
was  really  the  seventh  edition  of  *  The  Pleasures  of 
Hope,'  but  it  contained  several  engravings  and  some 
altogether   new  pieces,  among  which,   in   addition    to 

*  Lochiel '  and  '  Hohenlinden,'  were  the  once  bepraised 
'  Lines  on  Visiting  a  Scene  in  Argyllshire '  (the  old 
family  estate  of  Kirnan),  and  *  The  Beech  Tree's  Peti- 
tion.' 

In  the  course  of  some  pleasantry  at  the  house  of 
Rogers,  Campbell  once  remarked  that  marriage  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten  looks  like  madness.  His  own  case  was 
clearly  not  the  tenth,  at  any  rate  from  a  prudential  point 


8o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

of  view.  The  sale  of  his  new  volume  had  given  a 
temporary  fillip  to  his  exchequer,  and  with  the  pro- 
verbial rashness  of  his  class,  he  began  to  think  of  taking 
a  wife.  His  reasons  were  certainly  more  substantial 
than  his  finances.  He  says  that  without  a  home  of  his 
own  he  found  it  impossible  to  keep  to  his  work.  When 
he  lived  alone  in  lodgings  he  became  so  melancholy 
that  for  whole  days  together  he  did  nothing,  and  could 
not  even  stir  out  of  doors.  In  the  company  of  a 
certain  lady  he  had  found  for  the  first  time  in  his  life 
a  '  perpetual  serenity  of  mind,'  and  now  he  was  deter- 
mined to  hazard  everything  for  such  a  prize.  It  was 
a  big  hazard,  and  he  foresaw  the  objections.  His 
infatuation,  he  remarks  to  Currie,  will  inevitably  set 
many  an  empty  head  a-shaking.  But  happiness  and 
prosperity  do  not,  in  his  view,  depend  upon  frigid 
maxims ;  and  the  strong  motive  he  will  now  have  to 
exertion  he  regards  as  '  worth  uncounted  thousands ' 
for  encountering  the  ills  of  existence. 

The  lady  for  whom  Campbell  thus  braved  the  un- 
certain future  was  a  daughter  of  his  maternal  cousin, 
Mr  Robert  Sinclair,  who  had  been  a  wealthy  Greenock 
merchant  and  magistrate,  and  was  now,  after  having 
suffered  some  financial  reverses,  living  retired  in 
London.  She  bore  *  the  romantic  name  of  Matilda,' 
and  is  described  by  Campbell  as  a  beautiful,  lively, 
and  lady-like  woman,  who  could  make  the  best  cup  of 
Mocha  in  the  world.  Beattie  remarks  upon  the  Spanish 
cast  of  her  features :  her  complexion  was  dark,  her 
figure  spare,  graceful,  and  below  the  middle  height, 
and  when  she  smiled  her  eyes  gave  an  expression  of 
tender  melancholy  to  her  face.  Like  Campbell,  she 
had  been  abroad,  and  it  is  said  that  at  the  Paris  Opera 
she  attracted  great  attention  in  her  favourite  head-dress 
of  turban  and  feathers.  The  Turkish  Ambassador,  who 
was  in  a  neighbouring  box,  declared  that  he  had  seen 
nothing  so  beautiful  in  Europe.     We  have  learned  that 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  Si 

Campbell  himself  was  handsome,  but  Mr  Sinclair 
naturally  did  not  regard  good  looks  as  a  guarantee  of 
an  assured  income,  and  he  stoutly  opposed  the  match. 
The  prospective  husband  was  not,  however,  to  be  put 
off  by  talk  about  the  precarious  profits  of  literature. 
When  was  he  likely  to  be  in  a  better  position  to  marry  ? 
He  had  few  or  no  debts ;  the  subscriptions  to  his  quarto 
were  still  coming  in ;  the  '  Annals '  was  to  bring  him 
;^3oo  ;  and  at  that  very  moment  he  had  a  fifty  pound 
note  in  his  desk. 

Mr  Sinclair  remained  unmoved  by  this  recital  of 
wealth,  but  finding  that  his  daughter's  health  was  suffer- 
ing, he  waived  his  objections,  and  arrangements  were 
made  for  the  marriage  to  take  place  at  once.  Campbell 
now  adopted  every  means  in  his  power  to  make  money. 
He  wrote  to  his  friend  Richardson,  requesting  him  to 
take  prompt  measures  for  levying  contributions  among 
the  Edinburgh  booksellers,  the  stockholders  of  the 
new  edition.  '  In  the  name  of  Providence,'  he  demands 
in  desperation,  '  how  much  can  you  scrape  out  of  my 
books  in  Edinburgh?  If  you  can  dispose  of  a  hun- 
dred volumes  at  fifteen  shillings  each,  it  will  raise  me 
j£yS-  I  shall  require  £2^  to  bring  me  down  to  Scot- 
land .  .  .  and  under  ;^5o  I  cannot  furnish  a  house, 
which,  at  all  events,  I  am  determined  to  do.'  This 
request  was  made  only  nine  days  before  the  marriage, 
which  was  celebrated  at  St  Margaret's,  Westminster,  on  the 
loth  of  October  1803 — not  September,  as  Seattle  and 
Campbell  himself  have  it.  After  a  short  honeymoon 
trip,  the  pair  returned  to  town  and  settled  down  in 
Pimlico,  where  the  father-in-law  had  considerately  fur- 
nished a  suite  of  rooms  for  them. 

Campbell's  idea  had  been  to  make  his  home  in  some 
*  cottage  retreat '  near  Edinburgh.  He  did  not  want 
society  or  callers ;  he  wanted  to  be  sober  and  indus- 
trious; therefore  he  would  live  in  the  country  if  he 
should  have  to  go  ten  miles  in  search  of  a  box.     He 

F 


82  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

dwells  lovingly  on  this  prospect  in  letters  to  his  friends  ; 
but  although  he  did  not  abandon  the  notion  for  some 
time,  it  never  came  to  anything.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
his  new  responsibilities  led  to  engagements  which  prac- 
tically chained  him  to  London ;  to  say  nothing  of  the 
circumstance  that  he  had  joined  the  Volunteers,  in  view 
of  the  threatened  invasion  of  which  he  sung.  More- 
over, he  had  got  into  some  trouble  with  his  Edinburgh 
publisher,  and  probably  he  felt  that  his  presence  in  or 
near  the  capital  would  only  add  to  his  personal  annoy- 
ance. How  different  his  after  life  might  have  been  had 
he  carried  out  his  original  intention,  it  is  useless  to 
speculate. 

As  it  was,  he  had  not  been  long  married  when 
financial  difficulties  began  to  bear  heavily  upon  him. 
He  started  badly  by  borrowing  money  from  one  of  his 
sisters;  later  on  he  borrowed  jCSS  from  Currie  ;  and 
finally  he  had  to  ask  a  loan  of  ^50  from  Scott.  A 
man  of  really  independent  spirit,  such  as  Campbell 
professed  to  be,  would  have  felt  all  this  very  galling, 
but  there  is  nothing  to  indicate  that  Campbell  ex- 
perienced more  than  a  momentary  sense  of  shame  at 
the  position  in  which  he  had  placed  himself.  By  and 
by  we  find  him  confessing  to  Currie  that  he  doubted 
whether  he  had  ever  been  a  poet  at  all,  so  grovelling 
and  so  parsimonious  had  he  become  :  '  I  have  grown  a 
great  scrub,  you  would  hardly  believe  how  avaricious.' 
To  explain  the  necessity  for  these  unpoetic  borrowings 
would  be  somewhat  difficult.  It  certainly  did  not  arise 
from  idleness  or  want  of  work.  Campbell  was  con- 
stantly being  offered  literary  employment,  and  he  had 
by  this  time  formed  a  profitable  engagement  with  T/ie 
Star.  In  November  he  describes  himself  as  an  ex- 
ceedingly busy  man,  habitually  contented,  and  working 
twelve  hours  a  day  for  those  depending  on  him.  '  I  am 
scribble,  scribble,  scribbling  for  that  monosyllable  which 
cannot  be  wanted — bread,   not   fame.'     But  the  scrib- 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  83 

bling,  it  may  be  presumed,  did  not  furnish  him  with 
much  ready  cash,  and  the  current  household  expenses 
had  to  be  provided  for.  By  this  time  there  were  debts, 
too.  Bensley,  the  printer,  pressed  him  for  a  bill  of  ^100  ; 
he  owed  one  bookseller  ^30,  and  he  had  an  account 
of  ^25  for  his  Volunteer  uniform  and  accoutrements, 
which  were  to  have  cost  originally  only  ^10. 

Campbell  seldom  writes  a  letter  without  referring  to 
these  sordid  concerns  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  he  just 
as  often  speaks  of  his  newly-found  felicity  by  his  own 
fireside.  Never,  he  says,  did  a  more  contented  couple 
sit  in  their  Lilliputian  parlour.  Matilda  sews  beside 
him  all  day,  and  except  to  receive  such  visitors  as  can- 
not be  denied,  they  remain  without  interruption  at  their 
respective  tasks.  In  course  of  time  the  Lilliputian 
parlour  was  brightened  by  a  new  arrival.  The  poet's 
first  child,  Thomas  Telford — so  called  in  compliment 
to  the  engineer,  who  afterwards  paid  for  it  in  a  hand- 
some legacy — was  born  on  July  ist,  1804.  In  notifying 
Currie  of  the  event  he  grows  quite  eloquent  over  the 
'little  inestimable  accession'  to  his  happiness,  and 
asserts  his  belief  that  '  lovelier  babe  was  never  smiled 
upon  by  the  light  of  heaven.'  In  view  of  what  occurred 
later,  the  following  reads  somewhat  pathetically :  '  Oh 
that  I  were  sure  he  would  live  to  the  days  when  I 
could  take  him  on  my  knee  and  feel  the  strong  plump- 
ness of  childhood  waxing  into  vigorous  youth  !  My 
poor  boy  !  shall  I  have  the  ecstacy  of  teaching  him 
thoughts,  and  knowledge,  and  reciprocity  of  love  to 
me  ?  It  is  bold  to  venture  into  futurity  so  far.  At  pre- 
sent his  lovely  little  face  is  a  comfort  to  me.'  Well  was 
it  for  Thomas  Campbell  that  the  future  of  his  boy  lay 
only  in  his  imagination  ! 

In  the  meantime,  having  begun  to  give  hostages  to 
fortune,  he  felt  that  he  must  make  still  greater  efforts 
towards  securing  a  settled  income.  This  year  he  had 
been  offered  a  lucrative  professorship  in  the  University 


84  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

of  Wilna,  but  although  he  declared  his  readiness  to  take 
any  situation  that  offered  certain  support,  he  hesitated 
about  the  offer  because  of  the  decided  way  in  which  he 
had  spoken  against  Russia  in  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope.' 
He  had  no  fancy  for  being  sent  to  Siberia,  and  so,  after 
carefully  considering  the  matter,  he  declined  to  go 
to  Wilna.  It  was  at  this  time  that,  under  the  feeling 
of  his  responsibility  as  a  parent,  he  conceived  the 
idea  of  his  '  Specimens  of  the  British  Poets.'  He 
desired  to  haul  in  from  the  bookseUing  tribe  as 
many  engagements  as  possible,  of  such  a  kind  as 
would  cost  little  labour  and  bring  in  a  big  profit. 
The  'Specimens,'  he  thought,  would  answer  to  that 
description  ;  and  he  suggests  to  Currie  that  some  Liver- 
pool bookseller  might  embark  ^^500  in  the  undertaking 
and  make  ;!^iooo.  Find  the  man,  he  says,  in  effect, 
to  Currie.  Although  Currie  should  ruin  him  by  the 
undertaking,  it  would  only  be  ruining  a  bookseller,  and 
doing  a  benefit  to  a  friend  !  That  was  one  way  in 
which  Campbell  proposed  to  meet  his  increased  re- 
sponsibilities. Another  way  was  by  removing  his 
residence  to  the  suburbs.  At  Pimlico,  visitors,  as  he 
expresses  it,  haunted  him  like  fiends  and  ate  up  his 
time  like  moths.  To  escape  them,  as  well  as  to  be 
out  of  the  reach  of  '  family  interference '  (this  was 
rather  ungracious  after  the  father-in-law's  furnishing  !), 
he  took  a  house  at  Sydenham,  and  in  the  November 
of  1804  he  was  'safe  at  last  in  his  duke  domum.^ 


CHAPTER  VI 

POETICAL   WORK   AND    PROSE    BOOKMAKING 

In  1804  Sydenham  was  a  country  village  so  primitive 
in  its  arrangements  that  its  water  was  brought  on  carts, 
and  cost  two  shillings  a  barrel.  It  had  a  common  upon 
which  the  matter-of-fact  Matilda  thought  she  might  keep 
pigs,  and  a  lovely  country,  still  untouched  by  the  hand 
of  the  jerry-builder,  lay  all  around  it.  '  I  have,'  says 
Campbell,  describing  his  situation,  'a  whole  field  to 
expatiate  over  undisturbed :  none  of  your  hedged 
roads  and  London  out-of-town  villages  about  me,  but 
*'  ample  space  (st'c)  and  verge  enough "  to  compose  a 
whole  tragedy  unmolested.'  The  house,  which  he  had 
leased  for  twenty-one  years  at  an  annual  rent  of  forty 
guineas,  consisted  of  six  rooms,  with  an  attic  storey 
which  he  converted  into  a  working  '  den '  for  himself. 
Altogether  it  was  a  charming  home  for  a  literary  man, 
and  Campbell  ought  to  have  been  contented  and  happy. 
His  London  friends  came  to  see  him  on  Sundays,  and 
among  his  neighbours  he  found  many  sincere  friends, 
notwithstanding  Lockhart's  superfine  sneers  about  '  sub- 
urban blue-stockings,  weary  wives,  idle  widows,  and  in- 
voluntary nuns.' 

Unhappily,  the  old  moodiness  and  discontent  returned 
upon  him.  He  had  work,  but  work  which  he  despised. 
He  was  fairly  paid,  but  though  Mrs  Campbell  was  a 
'  notable  economist,'  there  was  always  apparently  some 
difficulty  in  getting  the  financial  belt  to  meet.  Camp- 
bell himself  was,  as  we  have  learned,  hopelessly  incap- 
able in  money  matters ;  indeed,  he  affirmed  that  he 

8s 


86  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

was  usually  ready  to  shoot  himself  when  he  came  to 
the  subject  of  cash  accounts.  He  had  settled  at  Syden- 
ham with  his  nose  just  above  water.  Currie  had  ad- 
vanced him  ;^55,  and  Gregory  Watt,  his  early  college 
friend,  who  died  about  this  time,  had  left  him  a  legacy 
of  ;^ioo;  but  the  furnishing  and  the  flitting  had 
swallowed  it  all  up,  and  a  *  Judaic  loan '  besides. 
His  main  source  of  income  at  this  date  was  from  the 
quarto  edition  of  his  poems,  and  the  sale  of  that  was 
beginning  to  flag.  It  is  true  he  had  his  four  guineas 
a  week  from  the  Star;  but  out  of  this  he  had  to  pay 
for  a  conveyance  to  take  him  to  town  daily.  We  must 
remember,  besides,  that  he  had  two  establishments  to 
provide  for,  his  mother's  at  Edinburgh,  as  well  as  his 
own  at  Sydenham  ;  and  in  those  times,  when  war  prices 
ruled,  the  cost  of  living  was  excessively  high.  But  all 
this  does  not  quite  explain  the  perpetual  trouble  about 
money — does  not  explain  how  it  should  have  been 
necessary  for  Lady  Holland  to  send  a  '  munificent 
present'  to  save  him  from  a  debtor's  lodging  in  the 
King's  Bench. 

Campbell  was  not  the  man  to  bear  poverty  in  un- 
complaining silence.  His  letters  of  this  period  are 
filled  with  plaints,  whinings,  regrets,  implicit  accusa- 
tions against  Providence  of  dealing  unfairly  with  one 
who  had  been  made  for  so  much  better  things.  He 
chafes  at  the  necessity  for  yoking  himself  to  the  irk- 
some tasks  of  the  literary  drudge,  tasks  that  require 
little  more  than  the  labour  of  penmanship.  He  de- 
plores that  his  Helicon  has  dried  up ;  he  has  no  poetry 
in  his  brain,  he  tells  Scott,  and  inspiration  is  a  stranger 
to  him  from  extreme  apprehension  about  the  future. 
The  only  art  now  left  to  him,  he  sadly  confesses,  is  the 
art  of  sitting  for  so  many  hours  a  day  at  his  desk. 

The  result  of  all  this  work  and  worry  and  disappoint- 
ment was  soon  seen  on  his  health.  His  anxiety  to  be 
up  in  the   morning  kept  him  awake  at  night,  and  he 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  87 

became  a  victim  to  insomnia.  He  sought  relief  in 
laudanum,  which,  while  procuring  him  sleep,  only  in- 
creased his  constitutional  tendency  to  mope.  He 
began  to  think  he  was  dying,  and  even  wished  him- 
self dead.  There  is  something,  he  remarked  to 
Richardson  in  1805,  in  one's  internal  sensations  that 
tells  more  certainly  of  disorder  than  the  diagnosis  of 
the  doctors,  and  those  sensations  he  was  undoubtedly 
conscious  of  feeling.  The  thought  of  the  consumma- 
tion comforted  him  rather  than  otherwise,  though  he 
shuddered  at  the  'dreadful  and  melancholy  idea'  of 
leaving  his  wife  and  family  unprovided  for — *as  it  is 
not  impossible  they  may  soon  be.'  Of  course  things 
were  not  nearly  so  bad  as  this.  Campbell  was  certainly 
not  well,  and  his  financial  affairs,  thanks  mainly  to  his 
own  mismanagement,  were  not  in  a  prosperous  state ; 
but  his  ailments  and  embarrassments  were  clearly  aggra- 
vated by  his  morbid  imagination.  It  was  nothing  more 
serious  than  a  case  of  liver  and  amour  propre.  If,  like 
Scott  after  the  great  crash,  he  had  cheerfully  and 
resolutely  confronted  his  circumstances,  the  ailments 
and  embarrassments,  if  they  had  not  vanished  entirely, 
would  infallibly  have  assumed  a  less  threatening  aspect. 
But  that,  after  all,  is  only  to  say  that  Thomas  Campbell 
should  have  been — not  Thomas  Campbell  but  some- 
body else. 

He  would  require  to  be  indeed  an  enthusiastic 
biographer  who  should  write  with  any  zest  of  Camp- 
bell's literary  labours  during  these  years.  Great 
writers  have  often  enough  been  great  hacks,  but 
seldom  has  a  man  of  Campbell's  poetical  promise 
descended  to  such  dull  drudgery  as  that  to  which  he 
had  now  betaken  himself.  He  continued  to  toil  at 
the  'Annals';  he  wrote  papers  for  the  Philosophical 
Magazine,  he  translated  foreign  correspondence  for 
the  Star,  and,  in  brief,  gave  himself  up  almost  entirely 
to  the  *  inglorious  employment '  of  anonymous  writing 


88  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

and  compilation.  He  wrote  on  every  imaginable 
subject,  including  even  agriculture,  on  the  knowledge 
of  which  he  says  he  was  more  than  once  complimented 
by  farmers,  though  Lockhart  cruelly  remarks  that  he 
probably  could  not  tell  barley  from  lavender.  Politics, 
too,  he  tried,  but  therein  was  found  wanting.  He  had 
no  real  acquaintance  with  the  political  questions  of  the 
time,  nor  did  he  possess  the  journalistic  faculty  in  any 
degree.  Before  he  finally  left  the  Morning  Chronicle^ 
his  connection  with  which  had  continued,  he  was  doing 
little  but  writing  pieces  to  fill  up  the  poets'  corner,  and 
even  these  were  sometimes  so  poor  that  Perry  declined 
to  insert  them. 

What  Campbell  always  wanted — what  indeed  he  made 
no  secret  of  wanting — was  some  project  which  would 
mean  light  labour  and  long  returns.  Early  in  1806  he 
had  become  acquainted  with  John  Murray,  the  pub- 
lisher, at  whose  literary  parties  he  was  afterwards  a 
frequent  guest,  and  the  possibilities  of  the  connection 
had  at  once  presented  themselves.  The  first  hint  of  these 
possibilities  is  revealed  in  some  correspondence  which 
now  took  place  about  a  new  journal  that  Murray  evidently 
intended  Campbell  to  edit.  The  details  of  the  scheme 
were  being  discussed  when  there  was  some  talk  about 
an  AthencBujn  being  started,  and  Campbell  pleads  with 
Murray  not  to  be  discouraged  by  the  beat  of  the  rival's 
drum.  '  Supposing,'  he  exclaims,  '  we  had  an  hundred 
AthencBums  to  confront  us,  is  it  not  worth  our  while  to 
make  a  great  effort?'  The  correspondence  certainly 
shows  that  Campbell  was  anxious  enough  to  make  the 
effort;  but  the  proposal  dropped  entirely  out  of  sight, 
and  he  had  to  set  his  brains  to  work  in  the  evolution 
of  other  schemes. 

Several  ideas  occurred  to  him.  He  thought  of  trans- 
lating a  'tolerable  poem,'  French  or  German,  of  from 
six  to  ten  thousand  lines,  and  he  begged  Scott  to  advise 
him  about  the  choice.     He  cogitated  upon  a  collection 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  89 

of  Irish  music,  but  found  that  Moore  had  anticipated 
him.  He  had  considerable  correspondence  with  Scott 
and  others  about  the  proposed  '  Specimens  of  the  British 
Poets,'  in  which  project  Scott  and  he  had,  unknown  to 
each  other,  coincided,  but  that  too  had  to  be  given  up, 
at  any  rate  for  the  present.  This  scheme,  as  Lockhart 
tells  us,  was  first  suggested  by  Scott  to  Constable,  who 
heartily  supported  it.  By  and  by  it  was  discovered 
that  Cadell  &  Davies  and  some  other  London  pub- 
lishers had  a  similar  plan  on  foot,  and  were  now,  after 
having  failed  with  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  negotiating 
with  Campbell  about  the  biographical  introductions. 
Scott  proposed  that  the  Edinburgh  and  London  houses 
should  join  hands  in  the  venture,  and  that  the  editorial 
duties  should  be  divided  between  himself  and  Campbell. 
To  this  both  Cadell  and  Campbell  readily  assented,  but 
the  design  as  originally  sketched  ultimately  fell  to  the 
ground,  because  the  booksellers  declined  to  admit 
certain  works  upon  which  the  editors  insisted. 

Such,  in  brief,  is  the  history  of  the  undertaking  which 
was  to  have  united  in  one  '  superb  work '  the  names  of 
Scott  and  Campbell.  It  is  unnecessary  to  dwell  further 
on  it,  unless,  perhaps,  to  note  that  Campbell's  notori- 
ously rabid  opinions  of  publishers  seem  to  have  had  their 
origin  in  the  negotiations.  Everybody  has  heard  how 
he  once  toasted  Napoleon  because  he  had  ordered  a 
bookseller  to  be  shot !  The  booksellers,  he  remarks  to 
Scott,  are  the  greatest  ravens  on  earth,  liberal  enough 
as  booksellers  go,  but  still  '  ravens,  croakers,  suckers  of 
innocent  blood  and  living  men's  brains.'  They  '  pledge 
one  another  in  authors'  skulls,  the  publisher  always 
taking  the  lion's  share.'  Dependence  upon  these 
'  cunning  ones '  he  finds  to  be  so  humiliating — they 
are  so  prone  to  insult  all  but  the  prosperous  and  inde- 
pendent— that  he  secretly  determines  to  have  in  future 
as  little  to  do  with  them  as  possible.  He  is  no  match 
for  them :  they  know  the  low  state  of  his  finances,  and 


90  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

take  advantage  of  him  accordingly.  Murray  is  '  a  very 
excellent  and  gentleman-like  man — albeit  a  bookseller — 
the  only  gentleman,  except  Constable,  in  the  trade.' 
And  much  more  to  the  same  effect.  There  was  really 
nothing  in  the  correspondence  about  the  '  Specimens ' 
which  should  have  led  Campbell  thus  to  traduce  a  body 
of  men  upon  whom  he  was  so  dependent,  and  by  whom, 
with  hardly  a  single  exception,  he  was  always  honour- 
ably and  even  generously  treated.  He  asked  too  much 
for  his  work — ^looo  was  his  figure — the  booksellers 
thought  they  could  not  afford  so  much,  and  they  said 
so.  It  was  Campbell  himself  who  was  at  fault.  He 
took  absurdly  high  ground — boasted,  in  fact,  of  taking 
high  ground — and  talked  of  ;^iooo  as  quite  a  perqui- 
site. In  short,  he  had  as  little  personal  justification  for 
libelling  the  booksellers  as  Byron  had  for  com^paring 
them  with  Barabbas, 

Defeated  in  his  design  for  the  British  poets,  Camp- 
bell now  went  about  whimpering  that  he  had  no 
hopes  of  an  agreeable  undertaking,  unless  Scott  could 
hit  upon  some  plan  which  would  admit  of  their  joining 
hands  in  the  editorship.  Longman  &  Rees  had 
engaged  him  to  edit  a  small  collection  of  specimens  of 
Scottish  poetry,  with  a  glossary  and  notices  of  two  or 
three  lives,  but  that  he  regarded  as  '  a  most  pitiful 
thing.'  Scott  had  no  suggestion  to  make,  and  Camp- 
bell, fretting  over  his  prospects  and  his  frustrated  hopes 
— or  as  Beattie  hints,  neglecting  his  food — again  fell  ill. 
A  second  son,  whom  he  named  Alison,  after  his  old 
Edinburgh  friend,  had  been  born  to  him  in  June  1805, 
but  the  jubilation  over  the  event  was  short-lived.  He 
became,  in  fact,  more  moody  and  disconsolate  than 
ever.  He  described  himself  as  a  wreck,  and  looked 
forward  to  his  sleepless  nights  being  '  quieted  soon  and 
everlastingly.'  Even  the  daily  journey  to  town  proved 
too  much  for  him,  and  he  took  a  temporary  lodging  in 
Pimlico,  going  to  Sydenham  only  on  Sundays.     By  and 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  91 

by  he  recovered  himself  a  little.  Medical  skill  did 
something,  but  improved  finances  did  more.  In  a 
letter  to  Scott,  dated  October  2,  1805,  we  find  this 
curt  but  pregnant  postscript :  '  His  Majesty  has  been 
pleased  to  confer  a  pension  of  ;^2oo  a  year  upon  me. 
GOD  SAVE  THE  KING.'  Campbell  says  the  '  bounti- 
ful allowance '  was  obtained  through  several  influences, 
but  he  mentions  Charles  Fox  (who  liked  him  because  he 
was  '  so  right  about  Virgil '),  Lord  Holland  and  Lord 
Minto  as  being  specially  active  in  the  matter. 

It  was  insinuated  that  the  pension  came  as  a  reward 
for  writing  a  series  of  newspaper  articles  in  defence  of 
the  Grenville  administration,  but  this  was  certainly  not 
the  case.  Campbell  was  no  political  writer,  no 
'scribbler  for  a  party.'  Among  his  many  faults  it 
cannot  be  laid  to  his  charge  that  he  sold  his  principles 
for  pay.  In  1824,  mercenary  as  he  was,  he  declined 
;^ioo  a  year  from  a  certain  society  because  to  take  the 
money  meant  *  canting  and  time-serving.'  We  need 
therefore  have  no  hesitation  in  accepting  his  assurance 
that  he  received  the  present  grant  'purely  and  ex- 
clusively as  an  act  of  literary  patronage.'  There  is 
perhaps  a  suspicion  of  the  poseur  in  his  palaver  about 
the  '  mortification '  which  his  pride  had  suffered  in  the 
matter,  but  beyond  that,  there  seems  to  be  no  reason 
for  casting  doubts  on  his  political  honesty. 

The  new  accession  of  fortune  was  not  princely,  but 
it  must  have  helped  Campbell  very  considerably.  De- 
ducting office  fees,  duties,  etc.,  the  allowance  amounted 
to  something  like  ^168  per  annum,  and  that  sum  he 
enjoyed  for  close  upon  forty  years.  He  says  that  his 
physicians — who  were  surely  Job's  comforters  all — told 
him  he  must  regard  it  as  the  only  barrier  between  him 
and  premature  dissolution ;  and  he  speaks  about 
making  it  '  do '  in  the  cheapest  corner  of  England. 
His  friends,  however,  were  by  this  time  thoroughly 
alive  to  the  necessity,  which  indeed  should  never  have 


92  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

existed,  of  doing  something  to  put  his  finances  on  a 
satisfactory  basis,  and  to  this  end  the  pubHcation  of 
another  subscription  edition  of  his  poems  was  arranged. 
Campbell  indulged  in  his  usual  idle  talk  about '  mortifica- 
tion '  at  having  again  to  ask  support  in  this  way,  but 
his  friends  wisely  kept  the  matter  in  their  own  hands  and 
paid  no  heed  to  his  maunderings. 

At  the  same  time  some  impatience  was  not  unnatur- 
ally being  felt  with  Campbell.  Francis  Horner,  a 
judicious  acquaintance  upon  whom  he  afterwards  wrote 
an  unfinished  elegy,  was  giving  himself  no  end  of 
trouble  over  the  new  edition,  and  this  is  the  way  he 
writes  to  Richardson.  Speaking  of  a  permanent  fund 
as  a  motive  to  economy  he  says : 

You  must  teach  him  [Campbell]  to  consider  this  subscription  as 
an  exertion  which  cannot  with  propriety,  nor  even  perhaps  with 
success,  be  tried  another  time  ;  and  that  from  this  time  he  must 
look  forward  to  a  plan  of  income  and  expense  wholly  depending 
upon  himself  and  most  strictly  adjusted.  He  gets  four  guineas  a 
week  for  translating  foreign  gazettes  at  the  Star  office ;  it  is  not 
quite  the  best  employment  for  a  man  of  genius,  but  it  occupies  him 
only  four  hours  of  the  morning,  and  the  payment  ought  to  go  a 
great  length  in  defraying  his  annual  expenses.  You  will  be  able 
to  convey  to  Campbell  these  views  of  his  situation  and  others  that 
will  easily  occur  to  you  :  none  of  us  are  entitled  to  use  so  much 
freedom  with  him. 

One  can  read  a  good  deal  between  the  lines  here. 
Campbell,  as  he  mildly  puts  it  himself,  was  never  '  over 
head  and  ears  in  love  with  working';  he  preferred  his 
friends  to  work  for  him.  Some  years  before  this  he 
looked  to  them  to  get  him  a  Government  situation, 
'  unshackled  by  conditional  service ' ;  and  even  now, 
with  his  pension  running,  and  much  as  he  prated  about 
his  pride,  he  '  trusts  in  God '  that  it  will  be  followed  up 
by  an  appointment  of  '  some  emolument '  in  one  of  the 
Government  offices.  It  was  clearly  an  object  with  him 
to  have  his  affairs  made  easy  by  outsiders.      Nor  was 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  93 

this  all.  There  is  no  doubt  that  he  had,  temporarily  at 
least,  given  way  to  convivial  habits  which  his  well- 
wishers  could  not  but  regard  with  regret.  He  admits 
as  much  himself,  and  Beattie  only  seeks  to  hide  the  fact 
by  speaking  in  his  solemn,  periphrastic  way  about  '  the 
social  pleasures  of  the  evening '  and  a  '  too-easy  compli- 
ance' with  the  solicitations  of  company.  In  these 
circumstances,  it  was  only  natural  that  Campbell's 
friends  should  desire  to  impress  upon  him  the  necessity 
of  guiding  his  affairs  with  greater  circumspection  so  as 
to  depend  more  upon  himself.  Meanwhile  they  went 
on  collecting  subscribers'  names  for  the  new  edition, 
and  Campbell  returned  to  Sydenham  to  continue  his 
work  on  the  'Annals'  and  think  about  something  less 
irksome  and  more  remunerative. 

It  was  at  this  juncture  that  Murray  considerately 
came  to  his  aid.  Though  the  original  scheme  of  the 
British  Poets  had  fallen  through,  Campbell  had  by  no 
means  given  up  the  idea  of  a  work  of  the  kind ;  and 
now,  having  discussed  the  plan  with  Murray,  it  was 
arranged  between  them  that  the  undertaking  should  go 
on.  Murray  was  naturally  anxious  that  Scott's  name 
should  be  connected  with  the  editorship,  but  Scott, 
although  he  at  first  agreed  to  co-operate,  ultimately 
found  it  necessary  to  restrict  himself  to  works  more 
exclusively  his  own,  and  Campbell  was  accordingly  left 
to  proceed  alone. 

In  the  summer  of  1807  his  labours  were  interrupted 
by  a  visit  to  the  Isle  of  Wight.  His  old  complaint  had 
returned,  and  he  was  advised  to  try  a  change  of  air  and 
scene.  He  left  London  in  the  beginning  of  June,  but 
the  change  did  not  prove  successful.  The  demon  of 
insomnia  still  haunted  him,  and  the  ennui  of  the 
place  became  so  intolerable  that  he  was  driven  to  act  as 
reader  to  the  ladies  in  the  boarding-house  where  he 
stayed  !  What,  he  cries,  must  Siberia  be  when  Ryde  is 
so  bad !     By  August  he  was  at  Sydenham  again,  only  to 


94  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

find  his  'abhorred  sleeplessness  returning  fast  and  in- 
veterately.'  He  had  written  very  little  poetry  for  some 
time,  and  such  as  he  did  write — the  tribute  to  Sir  John 
Moore,  for  example — is,  like  the  Greek  mentioned  by 
Pallet,  not  worth  repeating.  He  was  now  engaged 
almost  solely  upon  '  Gertrude  of  Wyoming,'  but  his 
head  was  'constantly  confused,'  and  the  poem  was  often 
laid  aside  for  weeks  at  a  time.  Still,  the  manuscript 
advanced,  and  by  Christmas  the  greater  part  of  it  was 
complete  enough  for  reading  to  a  private  circle  of 
friends. 

'  Gertrude '  finally  appeared,  after  a  long  process  of 
polishing,  alteration  and  addition,  in  April  1809.  Some 
time  before  its  publication  Campbell  wrote  that  he  had 
no  fear  as  to  its  reception  ;  only  let  him  have  it  out, 
and,  like  Sterne,  he  cared  not  a  curse  what  the  critics 
might  say.  The  critics  were  in  the  main  favourable. 
Jeffrey  had  already  seen  the  proofs,  and  had  written  a 
long  letter  to  the  author,  pointing  out  certain  '  dangerous 
faults,'  but  commending  the  poem  for  its  '  great  beauty 
and  great  tenderness  and  fancy ' ;  and  on  the  same  day 
that  the  poem  was  published,  the  Edinburgh  Review 
appeared  with  an  article  in  which  the  editor  rejoiced 
'  once  more  to  see  a  polished  and  pathetic  poem  in  the 
old  style  of  English  pathos  and  poetry.'  Its  merits,  he 
said,  '  consist  chiefly  in  the  feeling  and  tenderness  of 
the  whole  delineation,  and  the  taste  and  delicacy  with 
which  all  the  subordinate  parts  are  made  to  contribute 
to  the  general  effect.'  At  the  same  time  he  found  the 
story  confused,  some  passages  were  unintelligible,  and 
there  was  a  laborious  effort  at  emphasis  and  condensa- 
tion which  had  led  to  '  constraint  and  obscurity  of  the 
diction.'  The  Quarterly  reviewer,  none  other  than  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  was  more  severe  upon  its  blemishes.  He 
complained  of  the  '  indistinctness  '  of  the  narrative,  of 
the  numerous  blanks  which  were  left  to  be  filled  up  by 
the  imagination  of  the  reader,  of  its  occasional  ambiguity 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  95 

and  abruptness.  Its  excellences  were,  however,  gener- 
ously admitted ;  and  in  fact,  on  the  whole,  the  Quarterly 
said  as  much  in  its  favour  as  could  be  expected.  In 
those  days  party  spirit  led  to  incredible  freaks  of  literary 
criticism ;  and  it  was  only  Scott's  magnanimity  that 
could  have  allowed  him  to  forgive  Campbell's  Whig 
politics  for  the  sake  of  his  poetry.  Curiously  enough, 
considering  their  intimacy,  Campbell  did  not  know  that 
Scott  was  his  reviewer,  though  he  was  not  very  wide 
of  the  mark  when  he  spoke  of  the  writer  as  '  a  candid 
and  sensible  man,'  who  'reviews  like  a  gentleman,  a 
Christian,  and  a  scholar.'  Of  other  contemporary  criti- 
cisms we  need  not  speak.  The  poet's  friends  were  of 
course  blindly  eulogistic.  AHson  was  '  delighted  and 
conquered,'  and  Telford,  with  his  characteristic  bombast, 
anticipated  such  applause  from  the  public  as  would 
drive  the  author  frantic  ! 

'  Gertrude,'  as  has  more  than  once  been  pointed  out, 
was  the  first  poem  of  any  length  by  a  British  writer  the 
scene  of  which  was  laid  in  America,  and  in  it  Campbell 
is  the  first  European  to  introduce  his  readers  to  the 
romance  of  the  virgin  forests  and  Red  Indian  warriors. 
The  subject  may  have  occurred  to  him  when  transcrib- 
ing a  passage  in  his  own  *  Annals,'  in  which  reference  is 
made  to  the  massacre  of  Wyoming,  although  there  is 
possibly  something  in  Beattie's  suggestion  that  he  got 
the  idea  from  reading  Lafontaine's  story  of  '  Barneck 
and  Saldorf,'  published  in  1804.  Campbell,  however, 
as  we  know,  had  a  keen  personal  interest  in  America. 
His  father  had  lived  there ;  three  of  his  brothers  were 
there  now.  '  If  I  were  not  a  Scotsman,'  he  once  re- 
marked, '  I  should  like  to  be  an  American.'  No  doubt 
the  scenery  of  Pennsylvania  had  been  often  described  to 
him  in  letters  from  the  other  side. 

But  these  are  points  that  do  not  greatly  concern  us 
now.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  enter  into  any  minute 
criticism  of  the  poem.     Campbell  himself  preferred  it 


96  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

to  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope '  ('  I  mean,'  he  said,  '  to 
ground  my  claims  to  future  notice  on  it '),  while 
Hazlitt  regarded  it  as  his  '  principal  performance.' 
With  neither  opinion  does  the  popular  verdict  agree. 
Perhaps  it  may  be  that  while  '  Gertrude '  is,  as  Lock- 
hart  said,  a  more  equal  and  better  sustained  effort  than 
'  The  Pleasures  of  Hope,'  it  contains  fewer  passages 
which  bear  detaching  from  the  context.  For  one  thing 
the  poet  had  a  story  to  tell  in  '  Gertrude,'  and  he  was 
eminently  unskilled  in  the  management  of  poetic  narra- 
tive. '  I  was  always,'  he  remarks  to  Scott,  '  a  dead  bad 
hand  at  telling  a  story.'  In  '  Gertrude '  he  cannot  keep 
to  his  story ;  the  construction  of  the  entire  poem  is 
loose  and  incoherent.  Even  the  love  scenes,  which, 
as  Hazlitt  says,  breathe  a  balmy  voluptuousness  of  senti- 
ment, are  generally  broken  off  in  the  middle.  Then 
he  was  unwise  in  adopting  the  Spenserian  stanza.  It 
was  quite  alien  to  his  style  ;  even  Thomson,  living  long 
before  the  romantic  revival,  managed  it  more  sympa- 
thetically than  Campbell.  The  necessities  of  the  rhyme 
led  Campbell  to  invert  his  sentences  unduly,  to  tag  his 
lines  for  the  mere  sake  of  the  rhyme,  and  to  use  affected 
archaisms  with  a  quite  extraordinary  clumsiness.  Any- 
thing more  unlike  the  sweet,  easy,  graceful  compactness 
of  Spenser  could  scarcely  be  imagined. 

Nor  are  the  characters  of  the  poem  altogether  suc- 
cessful ;  indeed,  with  the  single  exception  of  the  Indian, 
they  are  mere  shadows.  Gertrude  herself  makes  a 
pretty  portrait ;  but  as  Hazlitt  has  remarked,  she  cannot 
for  a  moment  compare  with  Wordsworth's  Ruth,  the 
true  infant  of  the  woods  and  child-nature.  Brant, 
again,  who  so  warmly  espoused  the  cause  of  the 
Mohawks  during  the  War  of  the  American  Revolution, 
is  but  a  faint  reality.  Campbell  fancied  that  he  had 
drawn  a  true  picture  of  the  partisan,  but  as  Brant's  son 
afterwards  proved  to  him,  the  picture  was  purely  im- 
aginary.     The  main  function    of  the   Indian  chief  is 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  97 

apparently  to  give  local  colour  to  the  poem,  though  it 
must  be  allowed  that  he  stands  out  boldly  among  its 
other  characters.  Hazlitt  comments  upon  his  erratic 
appearances,  remarking  that  he  vanishes  and  comes 
back,  after  long  intervals,  in  the  nick  of  time,  without 
any  known  reason  but  the  convenience  of  the  author 
and  the  astonishment  of  the  reader.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  death-song  of  the  savage  which  closes  the 
poem,  is  one  of  the  best  things  that  the  author  ever 
wrote. 

Byron  declared  that  '  Gertrude '  was  notoriously  full 
of  grossly  false  scenery ;  that  it  had  '  no  more  locality 
with  Pennsylvania  than  with  Penmanmaur.'  But  that 
was  an  obvious  exaggeration.  There  is  better  ground 
for  the  complaint  about  Campbell's  errors  in  natural 
history  as  exhibited  in  the  poem — about  his  having  con- 
ferred on  Pennsylvania  the  aloe  and  the  palm,  the 
flamingo  and  the  panther.  The  probability  is  that  he 
knew  as  much  about  natural  history  as  Goldsmith, 
whose  friends  declared  that  he  could  not  tell  the  dif- 
ference between  any  two  sorts  of  barndoor  fowl  until 
they  had  been  cooked.  Once  in  the  New  Monthly^ 
when  a  contributor  spoke  of  the  rarity  of  seeing  the 
cuckoo,  Campbell  added  a  correcting  note  to  say  that 
he  had  himself  '  seen  whole  fields  blue  with  cuckoos  ' ! 
But  even  Shakespeare  has  lions  in  the  forest  of  Arden, 
and  Goldsmith  makes  the  tiger  howl  in  North  America. 
There  is  no  need  to  insist  upon  absolute  accuracy  in 
such  matters.  One  would  gladly  notice  instead  the  real 
merits  of  the  poem,  which,  however,  are  not  so  readily 
discovered.  Hazlitt  spoke  enthusiastically  of  passages 
of  so  rare  and  ripe  a  beauty  that  they  exceed  all  praise. 
But  we  have  changed  our  poetical  point  of  view  since 
Hazlitt's  day ;  and  the  most  that  can  now  be  said  for 
'  Gertrude,'  is  that  it  is  a  third-rate  poem  containing  a 
few  first-rate  lines.  It  is  practically  dead,  and  can 
never  be  called  back  to  life. 

G 


98  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

'  Gertrude '  was  favourably  received  by  the  public, 
and  particularly  by  the  Whig  party,  to  whose  leaders 
Campbell  was  personally  known,  and  with  most  of  whom 
he  was  closely  intimate.  It  was  edited  in  America  by 
Washington  Irving  in  1810,  and  was  highly  praised  on 
the  other  side — a  fact  which  at  least  suggests  that  its 
local  scenery  was  not  so  false  as  Byron  declared  it  to  be. 
The  first  edition  was  a  quarto;  a  second  in  i2mo  was 
called  for  within  the  year.  The  quarto  edition  included 
some  of  the  better  known  short  pieces,  such  as  '  Ye 
Mariners,'  '  The  Battle  of  the  Baltic,'  *  Lochiel,'  '  Lord 
Ullin's  Daughter,'  and  '  Glenara,'  the  latter  founded  on 
a  wild  and  romantic  story  of  which  Joanna  Baillie 
afterwards  made  use  in  her  '  Family  Legend.'  The 
second  edition  contained  the  once-familiar  '  O'Connor's 
Child,'  a  rather  touching  piece  suggested  by  the  flower 
popularly  known  as  '  Love  Lies  Bleeding.'  Many  years 
after  this — in  1836 — the  Dublin  people  desired  to  give 
Campbell  a  public  dinner  as  the  author  of  '  O'Connor's 
Child '  and  '  The  Exile  of  Erin,'  but  Campbell  never 
set  foot  on  the  Emerald  Isle. 


CHAPTER  VII 

LECTURES    AND    TRAVELS 

Having  got '  Gertrude '  off  his  hands,  Campbell  returned 
to  his  literary  carpentering.  He  was  now  in  his  thirty- 
third  year,  and  had  produced  the  two  long  poems  and 
the  short  pieces  upon  which  his  fame,  such  as  it  is,  rests. 
Were  it  not  for  his  lines  on  '  The  Last  Man,'  it  would 
have  been  much  better  for  his  reputation  had  he  never 
again  put  pen  to  paper.  It  was  a  remark  of  Scott's 
that  he  had  broken  out  at  once,  like  the  Irish  rebels,  a 
hundred  thousand  strong.  But  unfortunately  he  had 
no  sustaining  power ;  he  could  not  keep  up  the  attack. 
His  imaginative  faculty,  never  robust,  decayed  much 
earlier  than  that  of  any  other  poet  who  ever  gave  like 
promise ;  and  we  have  the  sorry  spectacle  of  a  man 
still  under  forty  living  in  the  shadow  of  a  reputation 
made  when  he  was  little  more  than  out  of  his  teens. 

One  says  it  regretfully,  but  it  is  the  sober  truth  that 
Campbell  became  now  a  greater  hack  than  ever.  He 
declared  in  the  frankest  possible  manner  that  he  did  not 
mean  to  think  of  poetry  any  more ;  he  meant  to  make 
money,  a  desire  which  was  very  near  his  heart  all  along. 
He  had  been  working  fourteen  hours  a  day  for  some  time, 
but  the  weak  flesh  began  to  complain,  and  four  hours 
had  to  be  cut  off.  In  1810  he  lost  his  youngest  child, 
Alison,  and  overwhelmed  himself  with  grief.  Before 
he  had  recovered  from  the  shock  his  mother  passed 
away  in  Edinburgh.  She  had  been  suffering  from 
paralysis,  and  so  far  as  we  can  learn  Campbell  had 
nothing  more   touching  to  say  of  her  death   than  to 

99 


loo  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

express  his  '  sincere  acquiescence '  in  the  dispensation 
of  Providence. 

One  or  two  little  incidents  helped  to  revive  his  spirits 
after  the  snapping  of  these  sacred  ties.  He  had  been 
presented  to  the  Princess  of  Wales  by  Lady  Charlotte 
Campbell,  who  thoughtfully,  as  he  tells  a  correspondent 
— but  why  thoughtfully? — kept  the  Princess  from  mak- 
ing an  '  irruption '  into  his  house.  The  Princess  sum- 
moned him  to  Blackheath,  where  he  had  the  felicity  of 
dancing  a  reel  with  her,  and  thus  'attained  the  summit 
of  human  elevation.'  An  onlooker  remarked  upon  this 
performance  that  Campbell  had  '  the  neat  national  trip,' 
but  we  have  no  other  evidence  of  his  dancing  accom- 
plishments. Campbell  was  delighted  with  himself;  but 
he  soon  discovered  that  his  good  luck  in  making  a  royal 
acquaintance  might  prove  embarrassing.  He  had  un- 
thinkingly remarked  to  the  Princess  that  he  loved  operas 
to  distraction.  *  Then  why  don't  you  go  to  them  ? '  she 
inquired.  Campbell  made  some  excuse  about  the  ex- 
pense, and  next  day  a  ticket  for  the  season  arrived. 
'  God  help  me  ! '  he  says,  in  recounting  the  incident, 
'  this  is  loving  operas  to  distraction.  I  shall  be  obliged 
to  live  in  London  a  month  to  attend  the  opera-house — 
all  for  telling  one  little  fib.' 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Campbell  had  now  something 
more  serious  to  think  about  than  attending  the  Opera. 
He  had  been  engaged,  at  his  own  suggestion,  to  give  a 
course  of  lectures  on  Poetry  at  the  Royal  Institution,  the 
fee  to  be  one  hundred  guineas  for  the  course.  When 
Scott  heard  of  the  undertaking  he  expressed  the  hope 
that  Campbell  would  read  with  fire  and  feeling,  and  not 
attempt  to  correct  his  Scots  accent.  But  Campbell  did 
not  agree  with  Scott  on  the  latter  point.  He  tells 
Alison  that  he  has  taken  great  pains  with  his  voice  and 
pronunciation,  and  has  laboured  hard  to  get  rid  of  his 
Caledonianisms.  Sydney  Smith,  he  says,  patronised  him 
more  than  he  liked  about  the  lectures,  and  gave  him 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  loi 

what,  in  Campbell's  case,  was  clearly  a  wise  hint  against 
joking.  In  truth  he  seems  to  have  had  more  than 
enough  of  advice  from  his  friends,  but  he  went  his  own 
way,  and  he  was  amply  justified  by  the  result. 

The   first   lecture,    delivered  on  the   24th   of  April 
1 81 2,   proved  a  great  success.     According  to  a  con- 
temporary  account,    the    hall    was    crowded,    and    the 
*  eloquent   illustrations '    of   the    lecturer    received    the 
warmest  praise.     Campbell   says  his  own  expectations 
were   more  than  realised,  though  he  had  been  so  far 
from  a  state  of  composure  that  he  playfully  threatened 
to  divorce  his  wife  if  she  attended  !     At  the  close  of 
the  lecture  distinguished  listeners  pressed  around  him 
with  compliments.     '  Byron,  who  has  now  come  out  so 
splendidly,  told  me  he  heard  Bland  the  poet  say,  "  I 
have  had  more  portable  ideas   given    me   in   the  last 
quarter  of  an  hour  than  I  ever  imbibed  in   the  same 
portion    of  time."     Archdeacon   Nares  fidgetted  about 
and  said  :  "  that's  new  ;  at  least  quite  new  to  wi?."'    And 
so  on.     Campbell's  friends  were  less  critical  than  kind. 
The  modern  reader  of  his  lectures  will  not   find  any- 
thing so  new  as   Nares  found,    nor  anything  so  very 
portable  as  Bland  carried  away.     The  lectures  form  a 
sort    of    chronological,    though    necessarily   imperfect, 
sketch  of  the  whole  history  of  poetry,  from  that  of  the 
Bible  down  to  the  songs  of  Burns.     The  scheme  was 
magnificent,  but  it  was  too  vast  for  one  man,  especially 
for  a  man  of  Campbell's  flighty  humour,  and  he  broke 
away  from  it  before  he  had  well  begun.     What  he  has 
to  say  about  Hebrew  and  Greek  verse  is  of  some  value, 
but  generally  speaking  the  thought  and  the  criticism  are 
quite  commonplace.     Madame  de  Stael,  it  is  true,  told 
Campbell  that,  with  the  exception  of  Burke's  writings 
there   was    nothing    in    English    so  striking    as    these 
lectures.     But   then    it   was    Madame   de    Stael    who 
solemnly  declared  that  she  had  read  a  certain  part  of 
*  The  Pleasures  of  Hope '  twenty  times,  and  always  with 


I02  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  pleasure  of  the  first  reading !  She  must  have 
known  how  well  praise  agreed  with  the  poet.  A 
second  course  of  lectures  was  delivered  at  the  same 
institution  in  1813,  but  of  these  it  is  not  necessary  to 
say  more  than  that,  in  the  conventional  language  of  the 
day,  they  were  '  applauded  to  the  echo.' 

Towards  the  close  of  181 3  Campbell's  health  got 
'  sadly  crazy '  again,  and  he  went  to  Brighton  for  sea 
bathing.  There  he  soon  found  his  lost  appetite  :  the 
fish,  he  wrote,  was  delicious,  and  the  library  quite  a 
pleasant  lounge  with  the  added  luxury  of  music.  He 
called  upon  Disraeli,  'a  good  modest  man,'  and  was 
invited  to  dine  with  him.  He  was  also  introduced  to 
the  venerable  Herschel  and  his  son,  the  one  *a  great, 
simple,  good  old  man,'  the  other  '  a  prodigy  in  science 
and  fond  of  poetry,  but  very  unassuming.'  The 
astronomer  seemed  to  him  like  *  a  supernatural  intelli- 
gence,' and  when  he  parted  with  him  he  felt  '  elevated 
and  overcome.'  In  such  lofty  language  does  Campbell 
intimate  his  very  simple  pleasures  and  experiences. 

But  the  Brighton  holiday  was  only  the  prelude  to  one 
much  longer  and  much  more  interesting.  During  the 
short-lived  peace  of  1802  Campbell  had  often  expressed 
a  wish  to  visit  the  scenes  of  the  Revolution  and  above 
all  the  Louvre ;  and  now  that  the  abdication  of  Buona- 
parte, the  capture  of  Paris,  and  the  presence  of  the 
allied  armies  had  drawn  thousands  of  English  subjects 
to  the  French  capital,  he  resolved  to  carry  out  the  long- 
cherished  plan.  On  the  26th  of  August  1814,  he  was 
writing  from  Dieppe,  where  one  of  the  rabble  called 
after  him  :  *  Va-t'-en  Anglais !  vous  cherchez  nous 
faire  perir  de  faim.'  On  the  way  to  Paris  he  halted  for 
two  days  at  Rouen,  where  he  found  his  brother  Daniel 
— '  poor  as  ever ' — with  whom  he  had  parted  at  Ham- 
burg in  1800.  Landing  in  Paris,  he  met  Mrs  Siddons, 
and  in  her  company  visited  the  Louvre  and  the  Elysian 
Fields,  which  he  held  to  be  as  contemptible  in  com- 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  103 

parison  to  Hyde  Park  and  the  Green  Park  as  the  French 
public  squares  and  buildings  are  superior  to  those  of 
London. 

At  the  Louvre,  where  he  spent  four  hours  daily,  he 
grandiloquently  says  he  was  struck  dumb  with  emotion, 
his  heart  palpitated,  and  his  eyes  filled  with  tears  at  the 
sight  of  that  'immortal  youth,'  the  Belvidere  Apollo. 
Next  to  the  Louvre  in  interest,  he  mentions  the  Jardin 
des  Plantes,  'a  sight  worth  travelling  to  see.'  The 
Pantheon  he  describes  as  '  a  magnificent  place,'  adding 
that  the  vaults  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  are  the  only 
cleanly  things  he  has  seen  in  Paris ;  so  neat  and  tidy 
that  they  remind  him  rather  of  a  comfortable  English 
pantry  than  of  anything  of  an  awe-inspiring  nature. 
Versailles  is  'very  splendid  indeed,'  but  the  palace  is 
'  not  large  enough  for  the  basis,  and  the  trees  are 
clipped  with  horrible  formality.'  He  is  not  lost  in 
admiration  of  the  French  women.  'There  are  two 
sorts  of  them — the  aquiline,  or  rather  nut-cracker  faces, 
and  the  broad  faces ;  both  are  ugly.'  On  the  other 
hand,  he  finds  that  the  handsomest  Englishmen  are 
inferior  to  the  really  handsome  Frenchmen.  The 
Englishman  always  looks  very  John  Bullish ;  and 
nothing  that  the  French  say  flatters  him  so  much  as 
when  they  declare  that  they  would  not  take  him  for 
un  Anglois.  The  Opera  he  describes  as  '  a  set  of  silly 
things,  but  with  some  exquisite  music ' ;  the  French 
acting  in  tragedy  he  does  not  relish,  but  their  comic 
acting  is  perfecgpn.  Of  notable  people  whom  he  met  he 
mentions  the  elder  Schlegel,  Humboldt,  Cuvier,  Denon 
the  Egyptian  traveller — '  a  very  pleasing  person ' — and 
the  Duke  of  Wellington.  To  the  latter  he  was  introduced 
merely  as  *  Mr  Campbell,'  and  the  Duke  afterwards  told 
Madame  de  Stael  that  he  '  thought  it  was  one  of  the 
thousands  of  that  name  from  the  same  country ;  he  did 
not  know  it  was  the  Thomas.'  Schlegel  he  describes  as 
a  very  uncommon  man,  learned  and  ingenious,  but  ^ 


I04  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

visionary  and  a  mystic.  He  and  Humboldt,  'after 
much  entreaty,'  made  him  repeat  '  Lochiel.'  When 
Schlegel  came  to  England,  he  was  generally  Campbell's 
guest,  and  the  two,  notwithstanding  that  their  characters 
and  tastes  were  so  dissimilar,  appear  to  have  entertained 
a  sincere  regard  for  each  other. 

After  a  two  months'  stay  in  Paris,  Campbell  returned 
to  England,  with,  as  Beattie  pompously  phrases  it,  a  rich 
and  varied  fund  of  materials  for  reflection.  He  found 
his  work  much  in  arrear,  and  had  just  begun  to  make 
some  headway  with  it  when  the  unlooked-for  intelligence 
reached  him  that  by  the  death  of  his  Highland  cousin, 
MacArthur  Stewart  of  Ascog,  he  had  fallen  heir  to  a 
legacy  of  nearly  ;j^5ooo.  The  will  described  him  as 
'  author  of  "  The  Pleasures  of  Hope  " ' ;  but  it  was  not 
for  the  honours  of  authorship  that  he  was  rewarded. 
'  Little  Tommy,  the  poet,'  said  the  testator,  '  ought  to 
have  a  legacy  because  he  was  so  kind  as  to  give  his 
mother  sixty  pounds  yearly  out  of  his  income.' 

Stewart  died  at  the  end  of  March  1815,  and  by  the 
middle  of  April  Campbell  was  in  Edinburgh — whither 
he  had  gone  to  look  after  his  interests — feeling  '  as 
blythe  as  if  the  devil  were  dead.'  After  seeing  his  old 
friends  in  the  capital,  he  went  to  Kinniel  on  a  visit  to 
Dugald  Stewart,  and  then,  taking  the  Canal  boat  from 
Falkirk,  set  out  for  Glasgow,  where  he  made  a  round  of 
his  relations.  He  spent  a  very  happy  time  altogether, 
and  when  he  returned  to  Sydenham,  it  was,  as  he 
thought,  to  look  out  on  a  future  of  pro^^erity  and  com- 
parative ease.  A  few  days  after  his  arrival,  Waterloo 
decided  the  fate  of  Europe,  and  for  a  time  he  did 
nothing  but  speak  and  write  of  the  prodigies  of  British 
valour  performed  on  that  field.  Some  tributary  stanzas 
written  to  the  tune  of  '  The  British  Grenadiers '  show 
that  while  he  did  not  fancy  being  taken  for  an  English- 
man in  Paris,  he  was  very  proud  to  appear  as  a  John 
Bull  jingo  at  home. 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  105 

Under  his  improved  prospects  he  seems  to  have  had 
some  difficulty  in  settUng  down  to  his  old  literary  tasks. 
We  hear  of  him  working  again  at  the  eternal  'Specimens,' 
but  otherwise  his  pen  seems  to  have  lain  idle.  The 
American  heir  was  coming  over  in  August  to  take 
possession  of  the  Ascog  estates;  and  Campbell  hoped 
to  reap  some  additional  pecuniary  advantages  for  himself 
and  his  sisters.  The  heir  was  a  cousin  of  the  poet  and 
a  brother  of  the  Attorney-General  for  Virginia.  Beattie 
suggests  that  if  Campbell's  elder  brother  had  been  aware 
of  the  law  which  rendered  aliens  to  the  Crown  of  Great 
Britain  incapable  of  inheriting  entailed  property,  and 
had  made  up  his  title  as  the  nearest  heir,  he  might 
have  been  proprietor  of  the  old  estates,  which  were 
afterwards  sold  for  ;;^7 8,000.  But  no  such  luck  was 
to  befall  the  Campbell  family.  The  heir  came  into 
possession,  and  neither  Campbell  nor  his  sisters  benefited 
further  by  his  stroke  of  fortune.  Campbell  reported  that 
he  was  an  amiable  gentleman,  but,  so  far  as  he  could 
see,  was  not  inclined  to  be  generous.  Very  likely  he 
considered  that  Campbell  had  been  well  provided  for 
already.  At  any  rate  the  poet  had  to  content  himself, 
as  he  might  well  do,  with  his  pension  and  his  legacy  and 
continue  his  literary  cobbling  as  before. 

His  interests  now  became  somewhat  more  varied. 
His  surviving  son  had  been  sent  to  school,  but  having 
had  to  be  removed  on  account  of  his  health,  Campbell 
set  to  teach  the  boy  himself.  He  got  up  at  six  every 
morning  and  by  seven  was  hammering  Greek  and 
Latin  into  the  youth's  head.  It  was  all  nonsense, 
he  declared,  but  in  his  son's  interests  he  dared  not 
act  up  to  his  theory,  which  was  to  leave  Greek  and 
Latin,  and  instruct  him  in  'other  things.'  In 
Campbell's  view  it  was  a  vestige  of  barbarism  that 
'  learning '  only  means,  in  its  common  acceptation,  a 
knowledge  of  the  dead  languages  and  mathematics. 
Later  on  he  speaks  of  his  intention  to  drill  the  lad  in 


io6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

'  epistolary  habits,'  but  this  intention  he  was,  alas ! 
never  able  to  realise. 

While  the  Greek  and  Latin  lessons  were  going  on, 
some  of  Campbell's  friends  were  busy  with  plans  for  his 
benefit.  Scott,  avowedly  anxious  to  have  his  personal 
society,  proposed  that  he  should  allow  himself  to  be 
engineered — it  was  a  delicate  matter  of  supplanting  an 
inefficient  professor — into  the  Rhetoric  Chair  in  Edin- 
burgh University.  The  post  was  a  tempting  one,  worth 
from  ;^4oo  to  ;£S'^°  ^  Y^^^  >  ^^^  nothing  is  left  to  show 
how  Campbell  took  the  suggestion.  In  1834  he  was 
again  urged  to  appear  as  a  candidate  for  an  Edinburgh 
professorship,  but  declined  because  he  expected  to  live 
only  ten  years  longer,  and  it  would  take  him  half  that 
time  to  prepare  his  lectures.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  he 
would  have  regarded  the  present  proposal  with  favour, 
but  his  thoughts  were  immediately  turned  in  a  different 
direction  by  the  disinterested  action  of  another  friend. 
The  Royal  Institution  had  just  been  opened  in  Liver- 
pool, and  Roscoe  was  anxious  that  Campbell  should 
give  a  dozen  lectures  there.  Some  preliminary  hitch 
occurred  about  the  fee,  but  this  was  got  over,  and 
Campbell  ultimately  drew  no  less  a  sum  than  ;^34o 
from  the  course.  Considering  that  the  lectures  were 
practically  those  already  delivered  at  the  Royal  Insti- 
tution of  London,  he  might  compliment  himself  on 
being  remarkably  well  paid ;  yet  it  is  said  that  when  he 
was  afterwards  pressed  to  deliver  a  second  course  at 
Liverpool,  presumably  on  the  same  terms,  he  declined. 

Campbell  made  his  appearance  in  Liverpool  at  the 
end  of  October  18 18.  The  lecture-room,  wrote  one  of 
the  listeners  some  thirty  years  later,  was  *  crowded  by 
the  e/ife  of  the  neighbourhood.'  The  lecturer's  prose 
'  was  declared  to  be  more  poetic  than  his  poetry ;  his 
glowing  imagination  gave  a  double  charm  to  those 
passages  from  the  poets  which  he  cited  as  illustrations. 
The  effect  and  animation  of  his  eye,   his  figure,    his 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  107 

voice,  in  reciting  these  passages  are  still  vividly  remem- 
bered.' From  Liverpool  he  went  on  to  Birmingham, 
where  he  received  ^^  100  for  repeating  the  lectures  there. 
At  Birmingham  'it  pleased  fate  that  Thomas  should 
take  the  measles,'  and  Campbell  himself  had  to  get 
blisters  applied  to  his  chest  to  relieve  his  breathing. 
Under  the  circumstances  he  could  not  be  expected  to 
visit  much  ;  but  he  was  introduced  to  Miss  Edgeworth, 
who  captivated  him  by  the  unassuming  simplicity  of  her 
manner,  and  he  '  met  L — d  [Lloyd],  the  quondam 
partner  of  L — b  [Lamb]  in  poetry — an  innocent 
creature,  but  imagines  everybody  dead.'  He  called 
upon  Gregory  "Watt's  father — the  James  Watt — with 
whom,  though  he  was  then  eighty-three,  he  says  he 
spent  one  of  the  most  amusing  days  he  ever  had  with 
a  man  of  science  and  a  stranger  to  his  own  pursuits. 

Suggestions  had  reached  him  from  Glasgow  and 
Edinburgh  that  he  should  deliver  his  lectures  in  these 
towns,  but  although,  with  his  usual  facility,  he  had 
come  to  think  that  lecturing  was  likely  to  be  his  metier, 
at  present  he  literally  had  not  a  voice  to  exert  without 
imminent  hazard.  And  there  was  another  danger.  '  I 
know  well,'  he  says,  '  what  would  happen  from  the 
hospitality  of  Glasgow  or  Edinburgh.  ...  I  should 
enjoy  the  hospitality  to  the  prejudice  of  my  health. 
For  though  I  now  abstain  habitually  from  even  the 
ordinary  indulgence  in  eating  and  taking  wine,  yet  the 
excitement  of  speaking  always  hurts  me.'  And  so, 
partly  to  avoid  the  conviviality  which  Dickens  and 
Thackeray  enjoyed  later  as  lecturers  in  Edinburgh  and 
Glasgow,  Campbell  declined  the  invitations  from  the 
north,  and  went  home  to  Sydenham. 

While  he  was  absent  on  this  literary  tour,  the  long- 
delayed  '  Specimens  of  the  British  Poets ' — Miss  Mit- 
ford  makes  very  merry  over  the  time  spent  on  the  work 
— had  at  length  been  published  in  seven  octavo  volumes. 
It  proved  only  a  moderate  success.     The  plan  was  well 


io8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

conceived,  but  Campbell  committed  the  initial  mistake 
of  deciding  to  print,  not  the  best  specimens  of  his 
authors,  but  only  such  pieces  mainly  as  had  not  been 
printed  by  Ellis  and  by  Headley.  Of  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
for  example,  he  says :  '  Mr  Ellis  has  exhausted  the  best 
specimens  of  his  poetry ;  I  have  only  ofifered  a  few 
short  ones.'  The  absurdity  of  this  procedure  need  not  be 
pointed  out.  People  do  not  go  to  a  book  of  specimens 
for  examples  of  a  writer  in  his  second-best  manner. 
They  want  the  cream  of  a  poet,  not,  as  Campbell  has 
too  often  given  them,  the  skimmed  milk  of  his  genius. 

But  the  work  was  faulty  on  other  grounds.  Its 
biographical  and  bibliographical  information  was  noto- 
riously incorrect  and  imperfect.  Campbell  had  no  taste 
for  the  drudgery  of  antiquarian  research  :  not  in  his  line, 
he  boldly  announced,  was  the  labour  of  trying  to  discover 
the  number  of  Milton's  house  in  Bunhill  Fields.  His 
facts  as  a  natural  consequence  were  never  to  be  de- 
pended upon.  In  the  'Specimens'  the  inaccuracies 
are  more  than  usually  abundant,  and  would,  even  if 
the  work  were  otherwise  satisfactory,  entirely  discount 
its  value.  '  Read  Campbell's  Poets,'  said  Byron  in  his 
Journal ;  '  marked  the  errors  of  Tom  for  correction.' 
Again:  'Came  home — read.  Corrected  Tom  Campbell's 
slips  of  the  pen.'  Some  of  Tom's  errors  were,  no  doubt, 
mere  slips ;  but  more  were  clearly  attributable  to  ignor- 
ance and  laziness.  If,  for  example,  he  had  been  at  the 
trouble  to  take  his  Shakespeare  from  the  shelf  he  would 
never  have  been  guilty  of  such  a  misquotation  as  the 
following : 

To  gild  refined  gold,  to  paint  the  lily. 
To  throw  a  perfume  on  the  violet. 

The  work  absolutely  bristles  with  errors  of  this  kind. 
Of  the  introductory  essay  and  the  prefatory  notices  of  the 
various  writers  it  is  possible  to  speak  somewhat  more 
favourably.     The  essay,  though  written   in  an  affected 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  109 

style,  is  still  worth  reading,  especially  the  portions 
dealing  with  Milton  and  Pope.  The  lives,  again,  are 
marked  by  a  fair  appreciation  of  the  powers  of  the 
respective  poets,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  old 
school ;  and  although  there  is  nothing  subtle  in  the 
criticisms,  there  is  welcome  evidence  of  that  sympathetic 
spirit  which  loves  poetry  for  its  own  sake.  This  is  the 
most  that  can  be  said  for  a  work  which  Lockhart  un- 
accountably eulogised  as  'not  unworthy  to  be  handed 
down  with  the  classical  verse  of  its  author.'  No  second 
edition  of  it  was  called  for  before  1841,  when  Campbell 
had  some  difference  with  Murray  about  its  revision. 
Murray's  original  agreement  with  Campbell  had  been  for 
;2^5oo,  but  when  the  work  was  completed  he  doubled 
that  sum  and  added  books  to  the  value  of  ;;^2oo  which 
Campbell  had  borrowed.  This  munificent  generosity 
Campbell  rewarded  by  refusing  to  correct  his  own  errors, 
though  he  was  offered  a  handsome  sum  to  do  so ;  and 
the  result  was  that  he  had  to  submit  to  the  '  Specimens ' 
being  silently  revised  by  another  hand.  The  incident, 
which  is  not  a  little  damaging  to  Campbell's  character, 
proves  again  that  Campbell  was  treated  by  the  book- 
sellers far  more  liberally  than  he  deserved. 

Having  disposed  of  the  *  Specimens,'  he  was  free  to 
look  about  for  other  work.  At  the  beginning  of  1820 
he  tells  a  friend  that  he  has  a  new  poem  on  the  anvil, 
with  several  small  ones  lying  by,  and  only  waits  until  he 
has  enough  for  a  volume  to  publish  them.  He  is  to 
lecture  again  at  the  Royal  Institution  in  the  Spring,  and 
as  both  his  fellow-lecturers  have  been  knighted,  he  thinks 
it  not  unlikely  that  he  will  be  knighted  too.  On  the 
whole  he  was  in  excellent  spirits ;  and  the  necessity  for 
unremitting  toil  having  been  removed,  he  began  to 
arrange  for  a  holiday.  This  time  he  decided  to  revisit 
Germany,  and  having  let  his  house  furnished  for  a  year, 
and  concluded  his  lecture  course,  he  embarked  with  his 
family  for  Holland  in  the  end  of  May. 


no  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Landing  at  Rotterdam,  with  the  view  of  which  from 
the  Maas  he  was  'much  captivated,'  he  proceeded  by 
the  Hague  and  Leyden  to  Haarlem,  where  he  was 
'transported'  with  the  famous  organ  in  the  Cathedral. 
From  Amsterdam  he  wrote  to  say  that  the  faces  of  the 
people  were  as  unromantic  as  the  face  of  their  country, 
but  he  was  pleased  to  see  their  houses  '  so  painted  and 
cleaned'  that  poverty  could  have  no  possible  terrors 
for  them.  At  Bonn  he  renewed  his  acquaintance  with 
Schlegel,  who  on  this  occasion  bored  him  sadly. 
Schlegel,  it  seems,  was  ludicrously  fond  of  showing  off 
his  English.  He  thought  he  understood  English  politics, 
too,  and  pestered  Campbell  with  his  crude  speculations 
about  England's  impending  bankruptcy  and  the  misery 
of  her  lower  orders.  '  I  had  no  notion,'  says  Campbell, 
'  that  a  great  man  could  ever  grow  so  wearisome.' 

Leaving  his  son,  now  in  his  sixteenth  year,  with  Pro- 
fessor Kapp,  who  was  to  board  and  instruct  him  for  ;£$ 
a  month,  he  went  to  Frankfort,  visiting  on  the  way  the 
Rolandseck,  where  he  wrote  his  '  Roland  the  Brave.' 
At  Frankfort  he  had  daily  lessons  in  German  from  a 
Carthusian  monk,  who  was  rather  surprised  at  his 
strange  plan  of  overcoming  the  difficulties  of  the 
language  by  dint  of  Greek.  At  Ratisbon  he  revived 
many  memories.  Of  the  twelve  monks  whom  he  had 
known  at  the  Scots  College  in  1800,  only  two  were  now 
alive ;  but  their  successors  were  '  very  liberal  of  their 
beer,  and  it  is  by  no  means  contemptible.'  When  he 
got  to  Vienna — where  he  read  Hebrew  with  a  Jewish 
poet  named  Cohen — he  found  that  his  fame  had  pre- 
ceded him.  His  arrival  was  publicly  announced,  transla- 
tions of  'Ye  Mariners'  and  the  Kirnan  '  Lines'  appeared 
in  one  of  the  leading  journals,  and  invitations  showered 
in  upon  him  from  the  best  people  in  the  capital.  He 
met  a  large  number  of  the  Polish  nobility,  who  crowded 
about  him  with  affectionate  zeal.  He  forgot  all  his 
sorrows  listening  to  the  organ  in  St  Stephen's.     The 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  in 

theatres  he  found  tiresome.  The  actors  indeed  were 
good,  but  what  could  they  make  of  such  a  language? 
From  Vienna  he  returned  to  Bonn  through  Bavaria. 
He  was  now  impatient  to  be  home  ;  and,  having  trans- 
ferred his  son  to  the  care  of  Dr  Me5'er,  he  bade  fare- 
well to  his  friends,  and  was  in  London  by  the  end  of 
November. 

Before  leaving  for  the  Continent  he  had  entered  into 
an  agreement  with  Colburn  for  editing  the  New  Mofithly 
Magazine  for  three  years,  from  January  182 1.  He  was 
to  have  ^^500  per  annum,  and  was  to  furnish  annually 
six  contributions  in  prose  and  six  in  verse.  Campbell 
had  not  shown  any  special  fitness  for  the  duties  of  an 
editor,  but  he  knew  the  value  of  his  own  name,  which, 
indeed,  was  probably  the  reason  of  Colburn's  applying 
to  him.  He  had,  as  Patmore  says,  the  most  extensive 
and  the  most  unquestioned  reputation  of  the  writers  of 
the  day,  and  the  proprietor's  judgment  was  soon  proved 
by  the  unprecedented  popularity  of  the  magazine. 
Campbell  certainly  showed  some  zeal  at  the  start.  He 
got  together  a  very  efficient  staff  of  contributors,  with 
Mr  Cyrus  Redding  as  his  sub-editor.  Moreover,  in 
order  to  be  near  the  office  he  decided  to  exchange  his 
Sydenham  house  for  one  in  town,  and  he  took  private 
lodgings  in  Margaret  Street  until  a  permanent  residence 
could  be  found.  There,  shutting  himself  up  from  out- 
side society,  he  *  received  and  consulted  with  his  friends, 
cultivated  acquaintance  with  literary  men  of  all  parties, 
answered  correspondents,  pretended  to  read  contribu- 
tions, wrote  new  and  revised  old  papers,  and,  in  short, 
identified  his  own  reputation  and  interests  with  those  of 
the  magazine.'  The  New  Monthly,  for  the  time  being, 
became  the  record  of  his  literary  life. 

With  all  this  show  of  work,  Campbell,  by  every 
account,  proved  a  very  unsatisfactory  editor,  though  no 
more  unsatisfactory  than  Bulwer  Lytton  and  Theodore 
Hook  who  succeeded  him.     Allowing  for  the  probable 


112  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

exaggeration  of  his  own  importance  as  sub-editor,  there 
is  enough  in  Redding's  reminiscences  to  show  that  he 
found  his  position  difficult  enough.  Campbell  had  so 
little  acquaintance  with  periodical  literature  that  he 
declares  he  never  saw  a  number  of  the  New  Monthly 
until  Colburn  put  one  into  his  hands  !  He  gave  no 
attention  to  the  topics  of  the  day,  and  his  knowledge 
of  current  literature  was  so  limited  that  contributors 
often  foisted  on  him  articles  which  they  had  furtively 
abstracted  from  contemporary  writers.  Of  method  he 
had  none.  His  papers  lay  about  in  hopeless  confusion, 
and  if  he  wanted  to  get  rid  of  them  for  the  time,  he 
would  jumble  them  into  a  heap,  or  cram  them  into  a 
drawer.  Articles  sent  by  contributors  would  be  placed 
over  his  books  on  the  shelves,  slip  down  behind  and  lie 
forgotten.  He  always  shied  at  the  perusal  of  manu- 
scripts, and  he  kept  the  printer  continually  waiting  for 
*  copy.'  Talfourd  says  he  would  balance  contending 
epithets  for  a  fortnight,  and  stop  the  press  for  a  week  to 
determine  the  value  of  a  comma.  In  short,  he  was  the 
very  worst  imaginable  kind  of  editor,  especially  from  the 
contributor's  point  of  view.  Nevertheless,  he  soon 
drew  a  strong  brigade  of  writers  around  him — among 
them  Hazlitt,  Talfourd,  Horace  Smith,  and  Henry 
Roscoe — and  placing  implicit  confidence  in  their  work, 
he  made  his  editorship  a  snug  sinecure.  *  Tom  Camp- 
bell,' said  Scott,  '  had  much  in  his  power.  A  man  at 
the  head  of  a  magazine  may  do  much  for  young  men, 
but  Campbell  did  nothing,  more  from  indolence,  I 
fancy,  than  disinclination  or  a  bad  heart.'  That  was 
the  true  word ;  Campbell,  to  use  the  expressive  term  of 
his  countrymen,  simply  could  not  be  '  fashed.' 

While  things  were  proceeding  thus  in  the  editorial 
sanctum  a  painful  crisis  was  approaching  in  Campbell's 
domestic  affairs.  He  had  not  long  returned  from  the 
Continent  when  reports  of  his  son  began  to  give  him 
uneasmess.     Thomas,  he  says,   talks   of  going  to  sea, 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  113 

which  indicates  that  he  is  not  disposed  to  do  much 
good  on  land.  Early  in  the  spring  of  1821  the  youth 
turned  up  in  London.  He  had  been  transferred  from 
Bonn  to  Amiens,  but  disliking  the  place  and  the  people, 
he  had  run  away  from  his  instructor,  Campbell  was 
greatly  affected  by  his  unexpected  arrival,  but  Tony 
M'Cann,  who  was  in  the  house,  proposed  to  celebrate 
the  event  by  kilHng  the  fatted  calf  !  In  the  autumn  the 
boy  was  sent  to  a  school  at  Poplar,  at  a  cost  to  his 
father  of  ;^i2o  per  annum,  but  he  had  not  been  many 
weeks  there  when  symptoms,  the  meaning  of  which  had 
hitherto  been  mistaken,  became  so  pronounced  that  he 
had  to  be  removed  to  an  asylum.  It  is  a  distressing 
subject,  and  there  is  no  need  to  go  into  details.  Young 
Campbell  was  ultimately  placed  under  the  care  of  Dr 
Matthew  Allen  at  High  Beech,  Essex.  There  he 
chiefly  remained  until  three  months  after  his  father's 
death  in  1844,  when  he  was  liberated  by  the  verdict  of 
a  jury  declaring  him  to  be  of  sound  mind.  The  taint 
of  insanity  clearly  came  from  the  mother's  side.  One 
of  her  sisters  had  been  deranged  for  many  years  before 
her  death  ;  and  indeed  it  has  been  hinted  that  Mrs 
Campbell  herself  suffered  from  some  '  mental  alienation  ' 
during  her  last  days.  A  writer  in  Hogg's  Weekly  In- 
structor for  April  12,  1845,  expressly  says  so.  He 
seems  to  have  known  Campbell,  but  his  statement,  so 
far  as  can  be  ascertained,  is  uncorroborated. 

In  1822  Campbell  removed  to  a  small  house  of  his 
own  at  I  o  West  Seymour  Street — a  '  beautiful  creation,' 
with  '  the  most  amiable  curtains,  the  sweetest  of  carpets, 
the  most  accomplished  chairs,  and  a  highly  interesting 
set  of  tongs  and  fenders.'  Here  he  wrote  one  of  his 
best  things  and  one  of  his  worst.  'The  Last  Man' 
was  published  in  \S\q  New  Monthly  va  1823.  Gilfillan 
calls  it  the  most  Christian  of  all  Campbell's  strains.  It 
is,  in  fact,  one  of  the  most  striking  of  his  shorter  pro- 
ductions.    The  same  idea  was  used  by  Byron  in  his 

H 


114  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

'  Darkness,'  and  this  led  to  some  controversy  as  to 
which  of  the  two  poets  had  been  guilty  of  stealing  from 
the  other.  Campbell  maintained  that  he  had  many 
years  before  mentioned  to  Byron  his  intention  of  writing 
the  poem,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  his  word. 
Of  course  the  idea  of  one  man,  the  last  of  his  race, 
remaining  when  all  else  has  been  destroyed,  is  quite  an 
obvious  one  ;  and  in  any  case  Campbell  treated  it  in  a 
manner  altogether  different  from  Byron,  of  whose  daring 
misanthropy  he  was  completely  innocent. 

It  has  been  said  that  at  West  Seymour  Street  Camp- 
bell also  wrote  one  of  his  worst  poems.  This  was  his 
'  Theodric,'  not  'Theodoric,'  as  it  is  constantly  mis- 
spelled. He  seems  to  have  been  engaged  on  it  early 
in  1823  ;  but  he  confesses  that  so  far  from  being  in  a 
poetic  mood  he  is  barely  competent  for  the  dull  duty 
of  editorship.  It  is  well  to  remember  this  in  judging 
the  poem.  He  had  begun  it  at  a  time  when  horrible 
dreams  of  his  son  being  tortured  by  asylum  attendants 
disturbed  his  rest ;  he  had  finished  it  with  the  ob- 
streperous youth  temporarily  at  home  —  outrageous, 
dogged,  and  disagreeable,  '  excessively  anxious  to  con- 
vince us  how  very  cordially  he  hates  both  his  mother 
and  me.'  He  knew  that  '  Theodric  '  had  faults,  but  he 
regarded  these  as  so  little  detrimental  that  he  believed 
when  it  recovered  from  the  first  buzz  of  criticism  it 
would  attain  a  steady  popularity.  It  appeared  in 
November  1824,  but  the  popularity  which  Campbell 
anticipated  never  came  to  it.  '  I  am  very  glad,'  he 
says,  '  that  Jeffrey  is  going  to  review  me,  for  I  think  he 
has  the  stuff  in  him  to  understand  "  Theodric."  '  But 
neither  Jeffrey  nor  anybody  else  understood  '  Theodric ' ; 
certainly  nobody  appreciated  it.  The  wits  at  Holland 
House  disowned  it ;  the  Quarterly  called  it  '  an  un- 
worthy publication ' ;  and  friend  joined  foe  in  the 
chorus  of  condemnation.  An  anonymous  punster 
referred  to  it  as  the  '  odd  trick '  of  the  season ;  and  its 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  115 

excessively  overdone  alliterations  (such  as  '  Heights 
browsed  by  the  bounding  bouquetin  ')  were  made  the 
subject  of  scornful  hilarity.  The  poem,  in  truth,  was  a 
sad  failure,  and  the  universal  censure  with  which  it  met 
was  thoroughly  deserved.  Campbell  had  '  attempted 
to  imitate  the  natural  simplicity  and  homely  familiarity 
of  the  style  of  Crabbe  and  Wordsworth,'  and  had  only 
succeeded  in  becoming  elaborately  tame  and  feeble. 

Just  before  the  publication  of  'Theodric,'  he  had 
paid  a  short  visit  to  Cheltenham  for  his  health's  sake ; 
now  he  went  to  Lord  Spencer's  at  Althorp,  'a  most 
beautiful  Castle  of  Indolence,'  tempted  by  the  hope  of 
seeing  books  which  he  could  not  see  elsewhere.  He 
really  wanted  to  study,  yet  he  capriciously  complained 
that  after  breakfast  the  company,  including  his  Lordship, 
went  off  to  shoot  and  left  him  alone  !  In  short,  he  was 
no  sooner  at  Althorp  than  he  wished  himself  home  again. 

When  he  returned  to  town,  in  January  1825,  it  was  to 
take  part  in  what  he  afterwards  called  the  only  import- 
ant event  in  his  career.  This  was  the  founding  of  the 
London  University,  the  idea  of  which  he  appears  to 
have  conceived  during  his  recent  intercourse  with  the 
Professors  of  Bonn.  The  scheme  was  discussed  at 
various  private  and  public  conferences  during  the  spring 
and  summer,  and  the  financial  basis  of  the  undertaking 
being  apparently  assured,  Campbell  proceeded  to  Berlin 
in  September  to  ascertain  how  far  the  University  there 
might  serve  as  a  model  for  London.  He  spent  a  week 
in  the  Prussian  capital,  which  he  compares  unfavourably 
with  London  in  everything  but  cookery,  and  came  away 
with  '  every  piece  of  information  respecting  the  Univer- 
sity,' and  every  book  he  wished  for.  At  Hamburg  he 
was  given  a  public  dinner  by  eighty  English  residents, 
and  was  driven  about  the  town  by  his  old  protege^  the 
'Exile  of  Erin.'  Back  in  London,  he  appeared  at  a 
meeting  in  support  of  the  Western  Literary  and  Scientific 
Institution,  and  in  an  eloquent  speech  declared  that  if 


ii6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

his  plan  of  a  Metropolitan  University  succeeded  he 
would  ask  for  no  other  epitaph  on  his  grave  than  to  be 
celebrated  as  one  of  its  originators.  The  plan,  fortunately, 
did  succeed,  and  although  Lord  Brougham,  to  serve  his 
own  political  ambitions,  tried  to  rob  him  of  the  honour, 
there  cannot  be  a  doubt  that  it  rightly  belongs  to  Camp- 
bell. Moreover,  King's  College  would  never  have 
existed  but  for  the  London  University,  so  that  Campbell, 
as  he  used  to  remark,  did  a  double  good. 

Meanwhile,  at  the  beginning  of  1826,  he  was  inter- 
esting himself  in  certain  domestic  affairs.  He  was 
having  a  spacious  study  constructed,  and  he  proposed 
to  treat  himself  to  a  new  carpet  and  some  elegant  leather 
chairs.  Every  volume  was  to  be  removed  from  the 
drawing-room  ;  and  henceforth  he  was  to  smoke  in  a 
garret,  not  in  his  study.  His  fancy  also  rioted  by  anti- 
cipation in  '  a  geranium-coloured  paper  with  gold  leaves 
to  harmonise  with  the  glory  of  my  gilded  and  red-bound 
books.'  But  there  his  purse  and  his  vanity  were  at 
loggerheads.  While  the  masons  were  hammering  in 
the  house,  the  Glasgow  students  had  decided  to  ask 
Campbell  to  allow  himself  to  be  put  forward  as  their 
Lord  Rector.  At  first  he  complied,  but  as  the  time 
approached  he  began  to  waver  in  his  decision.  He  was 
not  well,  his  son's  malady  distressed  him,  and  his 
pecuniary  affairs — thanks  in  a  great  measure  to  his 
own  reckless  extravagance — were  again  in  deep  water. 
Writing  on  November  6  (1826)  he  says  :  'I  got  in  bills 
on  Saturday  morning  for  the  making  up  of  my  new 
house,  treble  the  amount  expected ;  and  also  confirma- 
tion of  an  acquaintance  being  bankrupt,  for  whom  I  had 
advanced  the  deposits  on  three  shares  in  the  London 
University.  I  could  not  now  accept  the  Rectorship  if 
it  were  at  my  option.  If  I  travelled  it  must  be  on 
borrowed  money.  Friends  I  have  in  plenty  who  would 
lend,  but  I  fear  debt  as  I  do  the  bitterness  of  death.' 
This  seemed  decisive  enough,  and  yet  nine  days  later 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  117 

the  Principal  of  Glasgow  University  was  announcing  to 
him  that  he  had  been  elected  Lord  Rector  by  the 
unanimous  vote  of  the  four  'nations.' 

The  rival  candidates  were  Mr  Canning  and  Sir 
Thomas  Brisbane,  and  the  contest  had  proved  more 
than  usually  exciting,  from  the  fact  that  all  the  pro- 
fessors except  Millar  and  Jardine  were  opposed  to 
Campbell  on  the  not  very  solid  ground  of  'poUtical 
distrust.'  Some  enemy  even  sought  to  damage  his 
cause  by  circulating  a  report  that  his  mother  had  been 
'  a  washerwoman  in  the  Goosedubs  of  Glasgow.'  Wilson, 
referring  in  the  '  Noctes  Ambrosianse '  to  this  incident, 
remarked  that  in  England  such  baseness  would  be  held 
incredible ;  but  Wilson  forgot  that  the  fight  was  prac- 
tically a  political  one,  and  in  politics  any  stick  is,  or 
was,  good  enough  to  beat  a  dog  with.  Campbell's 
triumph  was,  however,  all  the  greater  that  it  was  achieved 
under  such  conditions ;  and  we  can  easily  imagine  the 
glow  of  pride  with  which  he  went  down  to  Glasgow  in 
the  succeeding  April  (1827). 

He  landed  on  the  9th  of  the  month,  after  a  journey 
which  he  had  cause  to  remember  from  the  circumstance 
that  Matilda  brought  *  seventy  parcels  of  baggage,'  and 
on  the  1 2  th  he  delivered  his  inaugural  address  in  the 
old  College  Hall.  There  is  abundant  evidence  of  his 
high  spirits  in  an  incident  recorded  by  Allan  Cunning- 
ham. Snow  lay  on  the  ground  at  the  time,  and  when 
Campbell  reached  the  College  Green  he  found  the 
students  pelting  each  other.  'The  poet  ran  into  the 
ranks,  threw  several  snowballs  with  unerring  aim,  then, 
summoning  the  scholars  around  him  in  the  Hall,  de- 
livered a  speech  replete  with  philosophy  and  eloquence.' 
The  snowbalUng  was  not  very  dignified  perhaps,  but  it 
was  strictly  in  character,  and  must  have  added  im- 
mensely to  Campbell's  popularity  with  the  'darling 
boys '  of  his  Alma  Mater.  The  Rectorial  address  was 
received  with  intense  enthusiasm.    One  listener  describes 


ii8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

it  as  elegant  and  highly  poetical,  and  says  that  it  was 
delivered  with  great  ease  and  dignity.  Another, 
a  student,  writes :  '  To  say  we  applauded  is  to  say 
nothing.  We  evinced  every  symptom  of  respect  and 
admiration,  from  the  loftiest  tribute,  even  our  tears — 
drawn  forth  by  his  eloquent  recollections  of  olden  times 
— down  to  escorting  him  with  boisterous  noise  along 
the  public  streets.' 

Campbell  remained  in  Glasgow  until  the  ist  of  May, 
banqueting  with  the  Professors  and  the  Senatus  (who, 
by  the  way,  created  him  an  LL.D.,  a  title  which  he 
never  used),  hearing  explanations  by  the  Faculty,  and 
coaching  himself  up  in  University  ordinances  and  finance. 
For  Campbell  filled  the  Rectorial  office  in  no  sinecure 
fashion.  Perhaps,  as  Redding  says,  he  made  more  of  the 
post  than  it  was  worth,  out  of  a  little  harmless  vanity 
and  somewhat  of  local  attachment.  But  at  any  rate  he 
did  not  spare  himself.  He  got  his  inaugural  address 
printed,  and  sent  every  student  a  copy  of  it,  inscribed 
with  his  autograph.  He  wrote  a  series  of  Letters  on 
the  Epochs  of  Greek  and  Roman  Literature,  which, 
after  running  through  the  New  Monthly,  he  presented 
to  the  students  in  volume  form.  He  investigated  the 
rights  of  the  students  too,  and  secured  them  many  ad- 
vantages of  which  they  had  been  unjustly  deprived. 
All  these  duties  he  performed  in  person,  thus  involving 
several  special  journeys  to  Glasgow;  so  that,  on  the 
whole,  it  may  safely  be  said  that  he  conducted  himself 
like  a  model  Lord  Rector. 

The  result  was  seen  in  his  re-election,  not  only  for  a 
second  but  for  a  third  term,  which  was  almost  unprece- 
dented, and  indeed  was  said  to  be  contrary  to  the 
statutes  and  usage  of  the  University.  His  popularity 
with  the  students  all  through  was  very  great.  They 
founded  a  Campbell  Club  in  his  honour;  commissioned 
a  full-length  portrait  by  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence ;  and 
presented  him  with  a  silver  punch-bowl,  which  figures 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  119 

in  his  will  as  one  of  his  *  jewels.'  When  he  was  elected 
for  the  third  time  they  went  wild  with  delight.  Camp- 
bell was  staying  with  his  cousin,  Mr  Gray,  in  Great 
Clyde  Street,  a  few  paces  from  the  river.  There  the 
students  gathered  to  the  number  of  fourteen  hundred, 
and  a  speech  being  called  for,  Campbell  appeared  at  the 
window.  '  Students/  he  said,  *  sooner  shall  that  river' 
— pointing  to  the  Clyde — '  cease  to  flow  into  the  sea, 
than  I,  while  I  live,  will  forget  the  honour  this  day 
done  to  me.'  There  is  but  one  step  from  the  sublime 
to  the  ridiculous.  At  this  stage  an  old  washerwoman 
passing  on  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd  was  arrested  by 
the  sight  of  what  she  conceived  to  be  a  lunatic  speak- 
ing from  a  window.  '  Puir  man  ! '  she  remarked  to  a 
student,  '  can  his  freends  no  tak'  him  in  ? '  A  royal 
time  it  must  have  been  for  the  poet  in  Glasgow  alto- 
gether. He  was  naturally  much  attached  to  the  city, 
and  although  he  complains  of  feeling  melancholy  while 
walking  about  his  old  haunts,  yet  it  was  a  melancholy 
not  without  alleviations.  The  Rectorship  had  been  '  a 
sunburst  of  popular  favour,'  the  '  crowning  honour '  of 
his  life ;  and  as  for  Glasgow  itself,  why  it  flowed  with 
'  syllogisms  and  ale.' 

The  third  year  of  Campbell's  Rectorship  expired  in 
the  autumn  of  1829,  but  meanwhile,  in  May  1828,  he 
had  lost  his  wife.  Mrs  Campbell  had  been  ailing  for 
some  time,  and  his  anxiety  on  her  account  darkens  all 
the  correspondence  of  the  period.  For  several  months 
he  acted  both  as  housekeeper  and  sick-nurse,  and  seldom 
crossed  his  door  except  to  get  something  for  the  invalid. 
Mrs  Campbell's  death  was  an  irreparable  loss  to  him. 
She  had  been  an  affectionate,  even  a  childishly  adoring 
wife  (she  used  to  take  visitors  upstairs  on  tiptoe  to  show 
the  poet  '  in  a  moment  of  inspiration ' !)  and  it  does  not 
surprise  us  to  read  of  the  bereaved  husband  relieving 
his  feelings  with  tears  at  the  sight  of  a  trinket  or  a  knot 
of  ribbon  that  belonged  to  her.     Mrs  Campbell  had 


I20  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

tributes  from  many  quarters.  Redding  said  that  no 
praise  could  be  too  high  for  her  good  management  and 
her  general  conduct  in  domestic  life.  Mrs  Grant  of 
Laggan,  writing  of  Campbell's  pecuniary  embarrassments, 
remarked  that  '  his  good,  gentle,  patient  little  wife  was 
so  frugal,  so  sweet-tempered,  that  she  might  have  dis- 
armed poverty  of  half  its  evils.'  It  was  maliciously 
hinted  in  Scotland  that  she  lived  unhappily  with  her 
husband,  but  upon  that  point  we  may  safely  accept  the 
testimony  of  Redding.  '  I  never,'  he  says,  '  found  Mrs 
Campbell  out  of  temper.  I  never  saw  a  remote  symptom 
of  disagreement,  though  I  entered  the  poet's  house  for 
years  at  all  times,  without  ceremony.  I  believe  the  tale 
to  be  wholly  a  fiction.' 

Mrs  Campbell's  death  sent  the  poet  out  into  the 
world  and  into  company  very  different  from  that  with 
which  he  had  been  used  to  associate.  Redding  makes 
touching  reference  to  the  change  at  his  fireside.  The 
recollection  of  Mrs  Campbell's  uniform  cheerfulness 
and  hospitality,  the  sight  of  her  tea-table  without  her 
presence,  her  vacant  chair,  that  inexpressible  lack  of 
something  which  long  custom  had  made  like  second 
nature — these  things  gave  to  Campbell's  home  a  melan- 
choly colouring  which  his  old  friends  never  cared  to 
contemplate.  '  Man,'  says  Lytton, '  may  have  a  splendid 
palace,  a  comfortable  lodging,  nay,  even  a  pleasant 
house,  but  man  has  no  home  where  the  home  has  no 
mistress.'  Henceforward  Campbell  had  practically  no 
home.  He  moved  about  from  house  to  house,  always 
seeking  the  comfort  which  he  never  found,  his  books 
and  his  papers  and  his  general  belongings  getting  ever 
into  a  greater  state  of  confusion  for  want  of  the  hand  that 
had  so  quietly  and  skilfully  ordered  his  domestic  affairs. 

The  literary  product  of  these  years  of  bereavement 
and  the  Glasgow  Rectorship  was  naturally  very  slight. 
Indeed  the  letters  to  the  students,  already  mentioned, 
formed  almost  the  only  writings  of  any  importance.     In 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  121 

concert  with  the  elder  students  he  projected  a  Classical 
Encyclopaedia,  but  for  some  unexplained  reason  the 
project  was  allowed  to  drop.  The  victory  of  Navarino 
in  October  1827  produced  some  stanzas  which  he  not 
inaptly  called  'a  rumble-tumble  concern,'  and  the  '  Lines 

to  Julia  M ,'  as  well  as  the  short  lyric,  '  When  Love 

came  first  to  Earth,'  seem  to  have  been  written  in  1829. 
It  was,  however,  an  essentially  barren  period,  unmarked 
by  a  single  piece  above  the  average  of  the  third-rate 
writer. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

CLOSING    YEARS 

Some  time  just  before  the  expiration  of  his  Rectorship 
at  Glasgow  in  1829,  Campbell  changed  his  residence 
from  Seymour  Street  to  Middle  Scotland  Yard,  where 
he  furnished  on  such  a  grand  scale  that  he  had  to  mort- 
gage a  prospective  edition  of  his  poems  to  pay  the  bill. 
In  connection  with  this  change  there  were  hints  of  a 
second  marriage — hints  which  continued  to  be  whispered 
about  for  many  a  day,  to  Campbell's  evident  annoyance. 
He  declared  that  there  was  no  foundation  for  the  report, 
that  it  was  '  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision ' ;  yet  we  are 
assured  by  Beattie  that  he  took  his  new  house  at  the 
suggestion  of  'an  amiable  and  accomplished  friend 
deeply  interested  in  his  welfare,  and  destined,  as  he 
fondly  imagined,  to  restore  him  to  the  happiness  of 
married  life.'  Who  the  amiable  lady  was  we  are  not 
told ;  nor  is  anything  said  as  to  why  the  engagement 
fell  through.  The  presumption  is  that  Campbell  changed 
his  mind,  and  did  not  want  to  have  the  matter  dis- 
cussed. 

At  this  time  a  suitable  marriage  would  certainly  have 
been  no  act  of  madness,  for  Campbell  was  clearly  feel- 
ing himself  more  than  usually  lonesome.  Indeed,  it 
was  with  the  avowed  object  of  mitigating  his  forlorn 
condition  that  he  established  the  Literary  Union,  a 
social  club  over  which  he  presided  till  he  finally  left 
London  in  1843.  The  burden  of  work  and  removal 
had  again  thrown  him  into  a  wretched  state  of  health, 
and  in  September  (1829)  he  writes  to  say  that  he  is 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  123 

doing  next  to  nothing  apart  from  the  New  Monthly. 
Protracted  study  exhausts  him,  and  he  dare  not  take 
wine,  which  is  the  only  reviving  stimulus  left.  Starva- 
tion alone  alleviates  his  distress :  a  hearty  meal  means 
an  agony  of  suffering;  therefore  he  stints  himself  at 
table,  and  loses  flesh  daily. 

So  the  beginning  of  1830  found  him.  His  friend 
Sir  Thomas  Lawrence  had  just  died,  and  although  he 
was  profoundly  ignorant  of  the  technique  of  art,  and 
had  even  a  limited  appreciation  of  pictures  and  painting, 
he  boldly  undertook  to  write  the  artist's  life.  He  set 
to  the  work  in  a  comically  serious  fashion.  He  had  a 
printed  notice  sent  to  his  friends  and  fastened  to  the 
door  of  his  study,  intimating  his  desire  to  be  left  un- 
disturbed till  the  book  was  finished.  These  notices — 
for  Campbell  issued  them  regularly — were  the  subject 
of  much  merriment  among  his  acquaintances.  It  was 
an  announcement  of  the  kind  that  drew  from  Hook  the 
jest  about  Campbell  having  been  safely  delivered  of  a 
couplet.  In  the  present  case  the  ruse  apparently  did 
not  answer,  for  in  a  week  or  two  he  fled  to  the  country. 
He  seems  to  have  spent  a  good  deal  of  time  over  the 
Life,  but  nothing  ever  came  of  his  labours.  Colburn 
insisted  on  having  the  book  in  a  few  months,  and  Camp- 
bell, declaring  that  he  could  'get  no  materials,'  petu- 
lantly threw  it  aside. 

This  was  in  December  1830.  By  that  time  Campbell 
had  severed  his  connection  with  the  New  Monthly. 
Colburn  had  parted  with  Redding  in  October,  and  the 
editor's  difficulties  were  in  consequence  greatly  increased. 
He  went  out  of  town,  and  in  his  absence  an  attack  on 
his  old  friend,  Dr  Glennie  of  Dulwich,  was  inadvertently 
passed  by  Redding's  successor,  Mr  S.  C.  Hall.  Camp- 
bell does  not  explicitly  say  that  this  incident  was  the 
cause  of  his  resignation,  but  as  he  mentions  interminable 
scrapes  and  threatened  law-suits,  we  may  safely  assume 
that  it  was.     At  any  rate  he  said  good-bye  to  Colburn 


124  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

in  no  amiable  mood.  Colburn  had  a  bill  of  jCjoo 
against  him,  partly  for  books  and  partly  for  the  expense 
of  the  current  unsold  edition  of  his  poems.  How  was 
he  to  discharge  such  a  debt?  The  difficulty  was 
temporarily  met  by  an  agreement  with  Cochrane,  the 
publisher,  whereby  the  latter  was  to  pay  the  ^^700  in 
return  for  Campbell's  undertaking  the  editorship  of  a 
new  venture,  to  be  called  T/ie  Metropolitan  Magazine^ 
and  for  two  hundred  unsold  copies  of  his  poems  in 
Colburn's  hands.  Unluckily,  Cochrane  could  not  make 
up  the  jQtoo,  and  Campbell,  in  order  to  satisfy  Col- 
burn, had  to  stake  the  rent  of  his  house  and  sell  off  his 
poems  at  such  price  as  they  would  bring.  At  the  close 
of  1830  he  went  into  lodgings,  and  instead  of  settling 
down,  as  he  had  hoped,  to  enjoy  a  kind  of  mild  otium 
cum  dignitate,  he  had  perforce  to  resume  his  seat  on  the 
thorny  cushion  of  the  editorial  chair.  When  he  left  the 
New  Monthly,  Redding  asked  him,  'What  about  the 
reduced  finances  ? '  '  Devil  take  the  finances/  said  he ; 
'  it  is  something  to  be  free  if  a  man  has  but  a  shirt  and 
a  carpet  bag.'  His  soreness  of  heart  at  having  to  sell 
his  liberty  again  may  thus  be  imagined. 

Campbell's  connection  with  the  Metropolitan  Maga- 
zine proved  anything  but  agreeable.  True,  things  went 
smoothly  enough  for  a  time.  In  the  autumn  he  felt 
himself  ten  inches  taller  because  he  had  got  a  third 
share  in  the  property.  The  share  cost  him  ^^500,  and 
he  had  to  borrow  the  money  from  Rogers,  for  whose 
security  —  though  Rogers  generously  decHned  any 
security — he  insured  his  life  and  pledged  his  library 
and  house  furniture.  But  the  concern  turned  out  to 
be  a  bubble,  and  Campbell  suffered  agonies  of  suspense 
about  his  money.  He  got  it  back  in  the  long  run,  and 
it  was  returned  to  Rogers.  But  this  was  only  the 
beginning  of  his  troubles.  At  the  request  of  Captain 
Chamier,  one  of  the  proprietors,  he  continued  in  the 
editorship,    but    the    magazine   passed    through    many 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  125 

vicissitudes.  When  it  came  into  the  hands  of  his  old 
friend  Captain  Marryatt,  Campbell  wanted  to  cut  con- 
nection with  it  entirely,  and  was  prevailed  upon  to 
remain  only  by  Marryatt  promising  to  relieve  him  of 
the  correspondence.  Shortly  after  this,  Marryatt  offered 
the  editorship  to  Moore  who,  however,  declined  to 
supplant  Campbell,  and  so  joined  the  staff  merely  as  a 
contributor.  Campbell  presently  reported  that  '  we  go 
on  in  very  good  heart.'  But  these  conditions  did  not 
last.  Campbell  found  that  he  could  not  work  comfort- 
ably under  Marryatt — who  was  just  about  to  give  the 
magazine  a  swing  with  his  'Peter  Simple' — and  he 
threw  up  the  editorship,  which  in  point  of  fact  he  had 
held  only  in  name.  He  seems  to  have  left  everything 
to  his  sub-editor.  He  seldom  examined  a  manuscript 
unless  it  came  from  one  of  his  friends  ;  nor  did  he  give 
by  his  contributions — nine  short  pieces  of  verse — any- 
thing like  value  for  the  money  he  received.  His  editor- 
ship, in  short,  was  purely  ornamental. 

But  it  is  necessary  to  retrace  our  steps.  Just  after 
taking  on  the  Metropolitan  in  1831,  Campbell  fixed 
upon  a  quiet  residence  at  St  Leonard's  which  he  now 
used  as  an  occasional  retreat  from  the  bustle  of  London. 
We  hear  of  him  strolling  with  complacent  pride  on  the 
beach  while  the  band  played  *  The  Campbells  are 
Comin' '  and  '  Ye  Mariners  of  England.'  He  tells  his 
sister  that  refined  female  society  had  become  of  great  con- 
sequence to  him,  and  that  he  found  it  concentrated  here. 
He  had  no  pressing  engagements,  and  accordingly  had 
written  more  verses  than  he  had  done  for  many  years 
within  the  same  time.  His  '  Lines  on  the  View  from 
St  Leonards,'  published  first  in  the  Metropolitan,  were 
well-known,  though  they  are  now  forgotten.  A  visit 
to  one  of  the  paper  mills  at  Maidstone  in  July  1831 
was  made  to  inquire  about  the  price  of  paper  for  an 
edition  of  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope  '  which  Turner  had 
promised  to  illustrate.     Campbell  had  a  little  joke  with 


T26  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  manager  at  the  mills.  '  I  am  a  paper-stainer,'  he 
said,  and  then  he  explained  that  he  stained  with  author's 
ink,  after  which  the  manager  became  'intensely  dis- 
dainful.' At  Stoke,  near  Bakewell,  whither  he  had 
gone  to  see  Mrs  Arkwright,  a  daughter  of  Stephen 
Kemble,  he  heard  Chevalier  Neukomm  play  the  organ. 
This,  he  says,  was  as  great  an  era  in  his  sensations 
as  when  he  first  beheld  the  Belvidere  Apollo.  In  the 
music  he  imagined  that  he  heard  his  dead  Alison 
speaking  to  him  from  heaven,  and  when  he  could  listen 
no  longer  he  slipped  out  to  the  churchyard,  where  he 
'  gave  way  to  almost  convulsive  sensations.'  Some  years 
later  he  met  Neukomm  again,  and  at  his  request  turned 
a  part  of  the  Book  of  Job — the  '  sublime  text '  of  which 
he  often  extolled — into  verse  for  an  oratorio.  The  effort 
appears  as  a  '  fragment '  in  his  works,  and  Neukomm 
is  said  to  have  composed  the  music,  though  no  mention 
of  such  an  oratorio  is  made  in  any  of  the  biographical 
notices  of  the  composer. 

We  come  now  to  an  important  episode  in  the  life  of 
Campbell — an  episode  which  for  long  engaged  almost 
his  sole  attention.  His  interest  in  the  cause  of  Poland 
had  already  been  strikingly  expressed  in  '  The  Pleasures 
of  Hope.'  It  was  an  interest  which,  as  his  friend  Dr 
Madden  puts  it,  had  all  the  strength  of  a  passion,  all 
the  fervour  of  patriotism.  Poland  was  his  idol.  '  He 
wrote  for  it,  he  worked  for  it,  he  sold  his  literary  labour 
for  it ;  he  used  his  influence  with  all  persons  of  eminence 
in  political  life  of  his  acquaintance  in  favour  of  it ;  and, 
when  it  was  lost,  in  favour  of  those  brave  defenders  of 
it  who  had  survived  its  fall.  He  threw  himself  heart 
and  soul  into  the  cause ;  he  identified  all  his  feelings, 
nay,  his  very  being  with  it.'  The  names  of  Czartoryski 
and  Niemeiewitz  were  never  off  his  lips.  A  tale  of 
a  distressed  Pole  was  his  greeting  to  friends  when 
they  met;  a  subscription  the  chorus  of  his  song. 
In   fact,  he  was  quite  mad   on   the  subject,  as  mad 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  127 

as  ever  Byron  was  about  Greece,  or  Boswell  about 
Corsica. 

What  roused  him  first  was  the  fall  of  Warsaw,  by  the 
news  of  which  he  was  so  affected  that  Madden  feared 
for  his  life  or  his  reason.  He  began  very  practically 
by  subscribing  ;^ioo  to  the  Warsaw  Hospital  Fund, 
'  a  mighty  sum  for  a  poor  poet,'  as  he  says  in  an  un- 
published letter.  He  had  written  some  '  Lines  on 
Poland '  for  the  Metropolitan,  and  these,  along  with 
the  Lines  on  St  Leonards,  he  proposed  to  publish  in 
a  brochure,  by  which  he  expected  to  raise  ;^5o  more. 
The  number  of  exiles  in  London  gradually  increased. 
Many  of  them  were  starving.  Campbell  constituted 
himself  their  guardian,  appealed  urgently  for  money  on 
their  behalf,  and  subsequently,  early  in  1831,  founded 
a  Polish  Association  with  the  object  of  relieving  distress 
and  distributing  literature  calculated  to  arouse  public 
sympathy  on  the  matter. 

Of  this  Association  he  was  appointed  chairman.  The 
duties  proved  anything  but  light.  In  June  1832  he 
writes  that  he  has  a  heavy  correspondence  to  keep  up, 
both  with  friends  at  home  and  with  foreigners.  He 
has  letters  in  French,  German,  and  even  Latin  to  write, 
and  these  afford  him  nothing  like  a  sinecure.  There 
was  also  a  monthly  journal  called  Polotiia  to  edit; 
besides  which  the  German  question — another  and  the 
same  with  the  Polish — involved  him  in  much  vexatious 
correspondence  with  the  patriots  of  the  Fatherland. 
At  this  date  he  was  constantly  working  from  seven  in 
the  morning  till  midnight ;  he  even  changed  his  dinner 
hour  to  two  o'clock  to  have  a  longer  afternoon  for  his 
beloved  Poles.  It  was  impossible  that  such  a  strain 
could  last;  and  at  length,  in  May  1833,  he  withdrew 
from  the  Association  as  having  become  too  arduous 
and  exciting  for  his  health.  Thus  closed  a  part  of  his 
career  which  was  as  honourable  to  him  as  anything  he 
ever  did,  and  upon  which  he  looked  back  with  feelings 


128  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

of  sad  pleasure.  His  zeal  was  perhaps  a  little  ill- 
regulated,  but  his  sincerity  and  his  active  practical 
efforts  on  behalf  of  many  brave,  unfortunate  men  bore 
the  impress  of  a  noble  and  a  generous  nature.  The 
Poles  showed  their  gratitude  in  many  touching  ways; 
and  we  have  his  own  express  declaration  that  only  once 
in  his  life  did  he  experience  anything  at  all  like  their 
warm-hearted  recognition  of  his  services  on  their  behalf. 

During  the  whole  of  this  distracted  period  Campbell 
had  all  but  completely  forsaken  his  own  proper  business. 
He  had,  of  course,  continued  to  edit  the  Metropolitan, 
and  his  random  contributions  to  that  journal  must  have 
filled  up  some  time,  but  from  the  fall  of  Warsaw  in 
March  1831  to  his  ceasing  connection  with  the  Polish 
Association  in  May  1833  his  interests  were  centred 
entirely  on  the  affairs  of  the  exiles.  Even  the  agitation 
about  the  Reform  Bill  had  passed  almost  unheeded, 
though  he  was  among  those  who  celebrated  the  passing 
of  the  Bill  by  dining  with  the  Lord  Mayor  at  the  Guild- 
hall, on  which  occasion  he  remarked  that  the  turtle  soup 
tasted  as  if  it  had  already  felt  the  beneficent  effects  of 
Reform.  From  Glasgow  had  come  in  1832  an  appeal 
that  he  would  allow  himself  to  be  nominated  as  a  candi- 
date for  Parliament,  but  he  declined  the  honour  because 
a  seat  in  the  House  would  entail  a  life  of  'dreadful 
hardship,'  and  cut  up  his  literary  occupation. 

The  only  work  of  any  note  which  he  did  while 
actively  interested  in  the  Poles  was  the  Life  of  Mrs 
Siddons.  He  finished  the  book,  at  the  end  of  1832,  in 
one  volume,  but  the  'tyrant  booksellers'  would  not 
look  at  it  until  he  had  expanded  it  into  two  volumes. 
It  was  at  length  published  in  June  1834.  Few  words 
need  be  wasted  over  it.  Mrs  Siddons,  of  whom  he 
entertained  an  extravagantly  high  opinion,  had  entrusted 
him  with  what  he  loftily  termed  the  'sacred  duty'  of 
writing  her  life,  but  he  was  thoroughly  unfitted  for  such 
a  commission,  and  it  is  the  simple  truth  that  no  man  of 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  129 

even  average  ability  ever  produced  a  worse  biography. 
The  Quarterly  called  it  'an  abuse  of  biography,'  and 
its  author  'the  worst  theatrical  historian  we  have  ever 
had,'  It  is  full  of  the  grossest  blunders,  and  some  of 
its  expressions  are  turgid  and  nonsensical  beyond  belief. 
Thus  of  Mrs  Pritchard  we  read  that  she  '  electrified  the 
house  with  disappointment,'  a  statement  upon  which 
the  Quarterly  remarked  :  *  This,  we  suppose,  is  what  the 
philosophers  call  negative  electricity.'  The  thing  was 
rendered  additionally  absurd  by  the  noise  which  Campbell 
had  made  about  the  writing  of  the  book.  He  talked 
about  it  and  wrote  about  it  to  everybody,  as  if  it  were 
to  be  the  magnum  opus  of  his  life.  From  this  the  public 
and  his  friends  naturally  formed  great  expectations,  and 
when  they  found  they  had  been  deluded  they  covered 
Campbell  with  ridicule. 

With  the  money  which  the  publication  of  this  wretched 
book  brought  him  Campbell  now  afforded  himself  a  long 
break.  He  conceived  the  idea  of  a  classical  pilgrimage 
in  Italy  as  likely  not  only  to  benefit  his  health  but  to 
furnish  him  with  materials  for  a  new  poem.  A  change 
in  the  tide  of  his  affairs  carried  him  however  to  Paris, 
and  he  never  set  eyes  on  the  sunny  land.  He  arrived 
in  the  French  capital  in  July,  when  the  weather  was  so 
hot  that  he  told  the  Parisians  their  beau  climat  was  fit 
only  for  devils.  He  was  eagerly  welcomed  by  many  of 
the  Polish  exiles,  who  gave  him,  what  he  did  not  dislike, 
a  grand  dinner,  at  which  Prince  Czartoryski  proclaimed 
him  '  the  pleader,  the  champion,  the  zealous  and  un- 
wearied apostle  of  our  holy  cause.'  He  heard  Louis 
Philippe  deliver  his  address  to  the  Peers  and  Deputies, 
and  made  a  '  dispassionate  enquiry '  into  the  character- 
istics of  French  beauty,  which  resulted  in  the  conviction 
that  the  French  ladies  have  no  beauty  at  all !  He  began 
work  on  a  Geography  of  Classical  History,  rising  every 
morning  with  the  sun,  and  studying  for  twelve  hours  a 
day.     Presently  some  French  friends  interested  him  in 

I 


I30  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  recent  conquest  and  colonisation  ot  Algiers,  and, 
with  his  characteristic  caprice,  he  decided  to  go  there  at 
once  and  write  a  book  on  the  colony. 

He  landed  in  Algiers  on  the  i8th  of  September 
(1834)  to  find  Captain  St  Palais  translating  his  poems 
for  publication.  '  Prancing  gloriously '  on  an  Arabian 
barb,  he  felt  as  if  he  had  dropt  into  a  new  planet.  The 
vegetation  gave  him  ecstatic  delight,  and  he  was  greatly 
elated  when  he  discovered  some  ruins  unmentioned  by 
previous  travellers.  As  usual  he  began  to  harass  him- 
self about  money,  but  the  announcement  opportunely 
arrived  that  Telford  had  left  him  ;^iooo,  and  he 
resolved  to  go  on  with  his  tour.  He  covered  the  entire 
coast  from  Bona  to  Oran,  and  penetrated  as  far  as 
Mascara,  seventy  miles  into  the  interior.  For  several 
nights  he  slept  under  the  tents  of  the  Arabs,  and  he 
made  much  of  hearing  a  lion  roar  in  his  '  native  savage 
freedom.'  But  all  this,  and  a  great  deal  more,  may  be 
read  in  his  '  Letters  from  the  South,'  an  informative 
and  even  lively  work  in  two  volumes,  which  appeared 
originally  in  the  New  Monthly.  Campbell's  account  of 
Algerian  scenery  is  so  glowingly  eloquent  that  if 
unforeseen  objects  had  not  diverted  his  attention,  the 
African  tour  would  probably  have  formed  the  subject 
of  a  new  poem.  As  it  was,  the  tour  remained  poetically 
barren,  save  for  some  lines  on  a  dead  eagle  and  a  jeu 
d'esprit  written  for  the  British  Consul's  children. 

Campbell  was  back  in  Paris  in  May  1835,  and  after 
'  a  long  and  gracious  audience '  with  Louis  Philippe,  he 
returned  to  London  to  tell  more  stories  than  Tom 
Coryatt,  and  enjoy  a  temporary  fame  as  an  African 
traveller.  The  tour  seems,  however,  to  have  done  him 
harm  rather  than  good.  Redding  says  he  was  astonished 
at  the  change  in  his  appearance.  He  looked  a  dozen 
years  older;  he  was  in  unusually  low  spirits,  and  he 
kept  harping  upon  his  disordered  constitution.  From 
this  date  onwards  the  record  of  his  career  is  not  worth 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  131 

dwelling  upon  in  any  detail.  He  suffered  greatly  from 
spells  of  ill-health ;  he  shifted  fitfully  from  one  residence 
to  another ;  he  visited  this  place  and  that  place ;  and 
with  constant  cackle  about  his  busy  pen,  did  almost 
nothing.  Under  these  circumstances  the  briefest  sum- 
mary of  the  remaining  years  of  his  life  will  suffice. 

Upon    his    return    from    Paris   in    1835    he   settled 
down  at  York  Chambers,  St  James'  Street,  where  he 
prepared  his  '  Letters  from  the  South '  and  arranged 
about  the  new  edition  of  his  poems  to  be  illustrated  by 
Turner.     In  May  1836  he  started  for  Scotland,  where 
he  remained   for  four  months,   spending,  he  says,  the 
happiest  time  he  had  ever  spent  in  the  land  of  his 
fathers.     On  former  visits  he  had  always  been  hurried 
and  haunted  by  the  necessity  of  sending  manuscripts  or 
proofs  to  London ;   but  now  he  was  his  own  master. 
At  Glasgow  he  dined  with  the  Campbell  Club,  and  got 
over   the   function    'very   well,'    having   left   Professor 
Wilson  and  other  choice  spirits  to  prolong  the  carousal 
into  the  small  hours.    Apropos,  a  story  is  told  of  Wilson 
and  Campbell  which  is  too  good  to  be  missed.     The 
poet's  cousin,  Mr  Gray,  had  a  bewitchingly  pretty  maid, 
who  had   set  Campbell — so  he  says — dreaming  about 
the  heroines  of  romance.     The  day  after  the  dinner, 
Wilson,  with  other  members  of  the  Club,  called  at  the 
house  while  the  Gray  family  were  absent.     '  I  rang  to 
get  refreshment   for  them,'   says   Campbell,    'and   fair 
Margaret  brought  it  in.     The  Professor  looked  at  her 
with  so  much  admiration  that  I  told  him  in  Latin  to 
contain  his  raptures,  and  he  did  so;  but  rose  and  walked 
round  the  room  like  a  lion  pacing  his  cage.     Before 
parting   he   said,   "  Cawmel,   that   might   be   your   ain 
Gertrude.     Could  not  you  just  ring  and  get  me  a  sight 
of  that  vision  of  beauty  again  ?  "    "  No,  no,"  I  told  him, 
"get  you  gone,  you  Moral  Philosophy  loon,  and  give 
my  best  respects  to  your  wife  and  daughters." '     As  a 
set-off  to  this,  it  may  be  recorded  that  Campbell  was 


132  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

sadly  dismayed  at  seeing  so  many  of  the  Glasgow 
'  bonnie  lassies '  going  about  with  bare  feet.  '  I  am 
constantly,'  he  says,  '  preaching  against  this  national 
disgrace  to  my  countrymen.  It  is  a  barbarism  so  unlike, 
so  unworthy  of,  the  otherwise  civilised  character  of  the 
commonality,  which  is  the  most  intelligent  in  Europe ; 
and  it  is  a  disgrace  unpalliated  by  poverty  in  Glasgow, 
where  the  industrious  are  exceedingly  well-off.'  The 
Club  dinner  was  followed  by  a  meeting  of  the  Polish 
Association,  at  which  Campbell  gave  a  forty-five  minutes' 
speech  that,  by  his  own  report,  caused  quite  a  sensation. 
He  went  to  hear  his  old  College  chum,  Dr  Wardlaw, 
preach,  and  afterwards  compared  him  with  Chalmers. 
Chalmers,  he  said,  '  carries  his  audience  by  storm,  but 
Wardlaw  is  a  reasoning  and  well-informed  person,'  a 
double-edged  compliment  to  the  more  famous  divine 
which  Campbell  probably  did  not  see. 

After  a  trip  to  the  Highlands — one  result  of  which 
was  his  '  Lines  to  Ben  Lomond,'  published  shortly  after 
in  the  Scenic  Annual — he  went  to  Edinburgh,  where,  on 
the  5  th  of  August,  he  was  made  a  freeman  and  was  feted 
like  a  prince.  The  Paisley  Council  and  bailies,  as  he 
humorously  tells,  refused  him  a  like  honour  ;  they 
bestowed  it  on  Wilson,  who  was  an  inveterate  Tory, 
and  denied  it  to  Campbell  because  he  was  a  Whig. 
Nevertheless,  Campbell,  taking  no  offence,  went  to 
Paisley  to  the  dinner,  and  Wilson  and  he  spent  a 
merry  time  at  the  races  afterwards,  Campbell  being, 
indeed,  so  '  prodigiously  interested '  as  to  have  an  even 
;j^5o  on  one  of  the  events  ! 

Returning  to  London  in  October,  he  was  back  in  Scot- 
land again  in  the  summer  of  1837.  There  was  a  printers' 
centenary  festival  in  the  capital  in  July,  and  nobody 
could  be  got  to  take  the  chair  '  because  it  was  a  three- 
and-sixpenny  soiree.'  This  roused  Campbell's  democratic 
blood,  and  he  immediately  offered  to  fill  the  breach. 
*  Delta '  proposed  his  health,  and  the  audience  got  their 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  133 

hearts  out  by  singing  '  Ye  Mariners  of  England.'  Be- 
fore the  year  ended  he  had  again  changed  his  residence. 
This  time  it  was  to  '  spacious  chambers  '  in  Lincoln's 
Inn  Fields,  which,  ignoring  all  the  teachings  of  experi- 
ence, he  furnished  so  expensively  that  he  had  to  under- 
take a  new  piece  of  hack  work  to  cover  the  cost.  The 
account  of  his  difficulty  with  an  Irish  charwoman  who 
sought  to  help  him  in  arranging  his  books  is  at  once 
amusing  and  pathetic.  She  understood,  he  says,  neither 
Greek  nor  Latin,  so  that  when  he  ordered  her  to  bring 
such  and  such  a  volume  of  Athengeus  or  Fabricius  she 
could  only  grunt  like  one  of  her  native  pigs.  What 
did  Campbell  expect?  Redding  has  a  dreary  picture 
of  the  disorder  in  which  he  found  him  one  afternoon 
shortly  after  this.  The  rooms  were  in  a  state  of  extra- 
ordinary confusion.  The  breakfast  things  were  still  on 
the  table,  a  coat  was  on  one  chair  and  a  dressing-gown 
on  another;  pyramids  of  books  were  heaped  on  the 
floor,  and  papers  lay  scattered  about  in  endless  disarray. 
It  was  indeed  a  sad  change  from  the  neatness  which 
had  prevailed  in  Mrs  Campbell's  time. 

About  this  date  the  illustrated  edition  of  his  poems 
was  pubHshed,  and  he  found  himself  in  some  perplexity 
over  the  disposal  of  the  drawings,  for  which  he  had 
paid  Turner  ^^550.  He  had  been  assured  that 
Turner's  drawings  were  like  banknotes,  which  would 
always  bring  their  original  price,  but  when  he  offered 
them  for  ;^3oo  no  one  would  look  at  them,  and  Turner 
himself  subsequently  bought  them  for  two  hundred 
guineas.  Of  this  illustrated  edition  two  thousand  five 
hundred  copies  went  off  within  a  twelvemonth  ;  while  of 
an  edition  on  shorter  paper  the  same  number  was  sold 
in  eleven  months  in  Scotland  alone.  Those  were  happy 
days  for  poets  1 

At  the  close  of  this  year  (1837)  the  Scenic  Annual 
appeared,  containing  four  pieces  of  Campbell's  own, 
notably  his  '  Cora  Linn,  or  The  Falls  of  Clyde,'  which 


134  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

he  had  written  while  in  Glasgow  the  previous  summer. 
Evidently  he  had  some  doubts  about  the  dignity  of 
accepting  the  editorship  of  this  work,  which  was  issued 
by  Colburn  merely  to  use  up  some  old  plates.  '  You 
will  hear  me  much  abused,'  he  says,  'but  as  I  get  ^200 
for  writing  a  sheet  or  two  of  paper  it  will  take  a  deal 
of  abuse  to  mount  up  to  that  sum.'  One  cannot  help 
recalling  how  Scott  scorned  to  write  for  the  Keepsake, 
but  Scott's  ideas  of  self-respect  were  very  different  from 
those  of  Campbell.  In  January  1838  Campbell  in- 
timates that  he  is  busy  on  a  popular  edition  of  Shake- 
speare for  Moxon.  Needless  to  say,  it  was  a  good-for- 
nothing  production.  It  is,  however,  a  point  in  his 
favour  that  he  had  the  grace  to  be  ashamed  of  it.  He 
said  he  had  done  it  hurriedly,  though  with  the  right 
feeling.  'What  a  glorious  fellow  Shakespeare  must 
have  been  ! '  he  exclaimed,  when  talking  about  the  book. 
'  Walter  Scott  was  fine,  but  had  a  worldly  twist.  Shake- 
speare must  have  been  just  the  man  to  live  with,'  This 
hint  at  Scott's  worldliness  is  sufficiently  amusing,  to  say 
the  least,  in  view  of  Campbell's  own  sordid  ambitions. 

On  the  loth  of  March  he  tells  how  he  has  been 
corresponding  with  the  Queen.  He  had  got  his  poems 
and  his  '  Letters  from  the  South '  bound  with  as  much 
gilt  as  would  have  covered  the  Lord  Mayor's  coach — 
the  bill  was  ;£6 — and  having  sent  the  volumes  to 
Windsor,  they  were,  as  such  things  always  are,  '  graci- 
ously accepted.'  For  an  avowed  democrat  Campbell 
made  an  unaccountable  outcry  about  this  '  honour,' 
which  produced  nothing  more  substantial  than  an 
autograph  portrait  of  Her  Majesty.  In  truth,  with  all 
his  good  sense,  he  could  be  very  foolish  on  occasion. 
He  was  one  of  the  spectators  at  the  coronation  of  the 
Queen  in  Westminster  Abbey  this  year — later  on  he 
was  presented  at  Court  by  the  Duke  of  Argyll — and  he 
declares  that  she  conducted  herself  so  well  during 
the    long    and    fatiguing    ceremony,    that    he   'shed 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  135 

tears  many  times.'  Why  anyone  should  shed  tears 
because  a  royal  lady  behaves  herself  becomingly 
would  have  been  a  puzzle  for  Lord  Dundreary,  But 
Campbell  was  given  to  blubbering  on  every  conceivable 
and  inconceivable  pretext.  Once  when  he  went  to 
visit  Mrs  Siddons  he  was  *  overcome,  even  to  tears,  by 
the  whole  meeting ' ;  and  we  hear  of  him  crying  like  a 
child  when  drawing  up  some  papers  on  behalf  of  the 
despoiled  Poles.  What  tears  are  '  manly,  sir,  manly,' 
as  Fred  Bayham  has  it,  may  sometimes  be  difficult  to 
decide,  but  there  can  be  no  question  about  the  unmanly 
character  of  much  of  Campbell's  snivelling. 

In  July  he  paid  another  visit  to  Scotland,  this  time 
in  connection  with  family  affairs.  Mrs  Dugald  Stewart 
died  while  he  was  in  Edinburgh,  and  one  more  link 
binding  him  to  the  past  was  broken.  Returning  to 
his  lonely  chambers,  he  reports  himself  as  working  from 
six  in  the  morning  till  midnight,  a  treadmill  business 
which  he  unblushingly  admits  to  be  due  to  sheer  avarice. 
The  money  !  the  money  ! '  he  exclaims ;  '  the  thought 
of  parting  with  it  is  unthinkable,  and  pounds  sterling 
are  to  me  "dear  as  the  ruddy  drops  that  warm  my 
heart."'  He  calls  himself  spendthrift — as  wretched 
and  regular  a  miser  as  ever  kept  money  in  an  old 
stocking;  and  finds  an  excuse  for  himself  only  in  the 
fact  that  he  is  getting  more  interested  in  public  charities. 
His  principal  literary  work  was  now  a  Life  of  Petrarch. 
Archdeacon  Coxe  had  left  a  biography  uncompleted, 
and  Campbell  agreed  to  finish  it  for  ;^2oo.  He  found 
it,  however,  so  stupid  that  he  decided  to  write  a  Life 
of  Petrarch  himself,  though  he  frankly  allowed  that 
until  quite  recently  he  had  something  like  an  aversion 
to  Petrarch  because  of  the  monotony  of  his  amatory 
sonnets,  and  his  wild,  semi-insane  passion  for  Laura. 
He  had  nothing  but  pity  for  a  man  who  could  be  in 
love  for  twenty  years  with  a  woman  who  was  a  wife 
and  a  prolific  mother  to  boot.     The  Life  of  Petrarch 


134  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

he  had  written  while  in  Glasgow  the  previous  summer. 
Evidently  he  had  some  doubts  about  the  dignity  of 
accepting  the  editorship  of  this  work,  which  was  issued 
by  Colburn  merely  to  use  up  some  old  plates.  *  You 
will  hear  me  much  abused,'  he  says,  'but  as  I  get  ^200 
for  writing  a  sheet  or  two  of  paper  it  will  take  a  deal 
of  abuse  to  mount  up  to  that  sum.'  One  cannot  help 
recalling  how  Scott  scorned  to  write  for  the  Keepsake^ 
but  Scott's  ideas  of  self-respect  were  very  different  from 
those  of  Campbell.  In  January  1838  Campbell  in- 
timates that  he  is  busy  on  a  popular  edition  of  Shake- 
speare for  Moxon.  Needless  to  say,  it  was  a  good-for- 
nothing  production.  It  is,  however,  a  point  in  his 
favour  that  he  had  the  grace  to  be  ashamed  of  it.  He 
said  he  had  done  it  hurriedly,  though  with  the  right 
feeling.  '  What  a  glorious  fellow  Shakespeare  must 
have  been  ! '  he  exclaimed,  when  talking  about  the  book. 
*  Walter  Scott  was  fine,  but  had  a  worldly  twist.  Shake- 
speare must  have  been  just  the  man  to  live  with.'  This 
hint  at  Scott's  worldliness  is  sufficiently  amusing,  to  say 
the  least,  in  view  of  Campbell's  own  sordid  ambitions. 

On  the  loth  of  March  he  tells  how  he  has  been 
corresponding  with  the  Queen,  He  had  got  his  poems 
and  his  '  Letters  from  the  South '  bound  with  as  much 
gilt  as  would  have  covered  the  Lord  Mayor's  coach — 
the  bill  was  ^6 — and  having  sent  the  volumes  to 
Windsor,  they  were,  as  such  things  always  are,  '  graci- 
ously accepted.'  For  an  avowed  democrat  Campbell 
made  an  unaccountable  outcry  about  this  'honour,' 
which  produced  nothing  more  substantial  than  an 
autograph  portrait  of  Her  Majesty.  In  truth,  with  all 
his  good  sense,  he  could  be  very  foolish  on  occasion. 
He  was  one  of  the  spectators  at  the  coronation  of  the 
Queen  in  Westminster  Abbey  this  year — later  on  he 
was  presented  at  Court  by  the  Duke  of  Argyll — and  he 
declares  that  she  conducted  herself  so  well  during 
the    long    and    fatiguing    ceremony,    that    he   'shed 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  135 

tears  many  times.'  Why  anyone  should  shed  tears 
because  a  royal  lady  behaves  herself  becomingly 
would  have  been  a  puzzle  for  Lord  Dundreary.  But 
Campbell  was  given  to  blubbering  on  every  conceivable 
and  inconceivable  pretext.  Once  when  he  went  to 
visit  Mrs  Siddons  he  was  '  overcome,  even  to  tears,  by 
the  whole  meeting  ' ;  and  we  hear  of  him  crying  like  a 
child  when  drawing  up  some  papers  on  behalf  of  the 
despoiled  Poles.  What  tears  are  'manly,  sir,  manly,' 
as  Fred  Bayham  has  it,  may  sometimes  be  difficult  to 
decide,  but  there  can  be  no  question  about  the  unmanly 
character  of  much  of  Campbell's  snivelling. 

In  July  he  paid  another  visit  to  Scotland,  this  time 
in  connection  with  family  affairs.  Mrs  Dugald  Stewart 
died  while  he  was  in  Edinburgh,  and  one  more  Unk 
binding  him  to  the  past  was  broken.  Returning  to 
his  lonely  chambers,  he  reports  himself  as  working  from 
six  in  the  morning  till  midnight,  a  treadmill  business 
which  he  unblushingly  admits  to  be  due  to  sheer  avarice. 
The  money  !  the  money  ! '  he  exclaims ;  '  the  thought 
of  parting  with  it  is  unthinkable,  and  pounds  sterling 
are  to  me  "dear  as  the  ruddy  drops  that  warm  my 
heart."'  He  calls  himself  spendthrift — as  wretched 
and  regular  a  miser  as  ever  kept  money  in  an  old 
stocking ;  and  finds  an  excuse  for  himself  only  in  the 
fact  that  he  is  getting  more  interested  in  public  charities. 
His  principal  literary  work  was  now  a  Life  of  Petrarch. 
Archdeacon  Coxe  had  left  a  biography  uncompleted, 
and  Campbell  agreed  to  finish  it  for  ;^2oo.  He  found 
it,  however,  so  stupid  that  he  decided  to  write  a  Life 
of  Petrarch  himself,  though  he  frankly  allowed  that 
until  quite  recently  he  had  something  like  an  aversion 
to  Petrarch  because  of  the  monotony  of  his  amatory 
sonnets,  and  his  wild,  semi-insane  passion  for  Laura. 
He  had  nothing  but  pity  for  a  man  who  could  be  in 
love  for  twenty  years  with  a  woman  who  was  a  wife 
and  a  prolific  mother  to  boot.     The  Life  of  Petrarch 


138  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Campbell  was  manifestly  unprepared  for  such  a  re- 
verse. He  had  expected  a  quick  and  profitable  return 
from  the  book,  and  had  entered  into  heavy  responsi- 
bilities, which  now  threatened  his  independence.  One 
cannot  help  remarking  again  upon  the  mystery  of  these 
continued  money  difficulties.  There  was  no  reason  why 
Campbell  should  be  everlastingly  in  financial  straits. 
He  had  his  pension,  he  had  been  uncommonly  lucky 
in  the  matter  of  legacies,  he  enjoyed  property  to  the 
extent  of  ;£^20o  a  year,  and  the  profits  of  his  work 
besides.  There  ought  now  to  have  been  less  cause 
than  ever  for  pleading  poverty.  That  there  were  diffi- 
culties is,  however,  abundantly  evident,  from  the  fact 
that  he  precipitately  resolved  to  dispose  of  his  house 
and  retire  to  some  retreat  where  he  could  live  cheaply 
and  await  the  advances  of  old  age.  London,  he  pro- 
tested, was  no  longer  the  place  for  him.  His  friends, 
too,  observed  that  his  constitution  was  visibly  failing : 
he  walked  with  a  feeble  step,  and  his  face  wore  an  ex- 
pression of  languor  and  anxiety. 

Under  these  disquieting  conditions  he  made  his  will, 
and  began  to  look  about  for  the  *  remote  corner.'  In 
the  meantime  he  was  preparing  still  another  edition  of 
his  collected  poems,  which  he  intended  to  publish  by 
subscription.  He  says  that  for  several  years  past  the 
sale  of  his  books  had  been  steadily  going  down,  so  that 
his  poems,  which  had  yielded  him  on  an  average  ^^500 
per  annum,  would  not  now  bring  him  much  more  than 
a  tenth  of  that  amount.  By  keeping  the  book  in  his 
own  hands  he  expected  to  make  a  goodly  sum.  But 
the  experiment  failed.  The  subscriptions  dribbled  in 
only  at  rare  intervals,  and  some  money  having  come  to 
him  from  the  death  of  his  eldest  and  only  surviving 
sister  in  March  1843,  ^s  well  as  a  little  legacy  from 
Mr  A'Becket,  the  new  edition,  like  its  predecessors, 
passed  into  the  hands  of  Mr  Moxon.  The  volume  was 
a  handsome  one  of  four  hundred  pages,  with  fifty-si?? 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  139 

vignettes  by  leading  artists.  It  had  a  not  inconsider- 
able sale,  and  brought  a  substantial  addition  to  Camp- 
bell's exchequer. 

Unhappily  he  had  neither  health  nor  spirits  to  enjoy 
his  improved  fortunes.  He  had  outlived  all  his  own 
family ;  he  was  getting  more  and  more  depressed,  more 
and  more  feeble.  To  leave  London  seemed  ill-advised, 
but  he  was  determined  upon  it,  and  having  made  ex- 
cursions to  Brittany  and  elsewhere  in  search  of  a  place 
of  retirement,  he  at  length  fixed  on  Boulogne.^  There 
he  arrived  with  his  niece  in  July  1843.  Redding  saw 
him  just  before  leaving  and  found  him  in  good  humour, 
though  he  appeared  weak  and  looked  far  older  than  he 
was.  He  had  sold  a  thousand  volumes  from  his  library, 
and  injudiciously  spent  ;^5oo  on  the  purchase  of  an 
annuity,  because  he  dreaded  that  he  might  run  through 
the  principal.  Boulogne  proved  not  uncongenial  to  his 
tastes — a  gay  place  with  many  public  amusements,  the 
Opera  and  the  '  Comedie,'  as  well  as  concerts  and 
races.  But  he  was  never  able  to  derive  any  pleasure 
from  it.  Even  the  books  he  had  brought  from  London 
were  never  placed  on  their  shelves. 

He  had  still  some  work  which  he  intended  doing, 
particularly  a  treatise  on  ancient  geography,  but  '  incur- 
able indolence'  overcame  him,  and  he  resigned  himself 
to  the  arm-chair.  He  complained  of  weakness,  and 
felt  a  gradually  increasing  disinclination  for  any  kind  of 
exertion.  In  March  1844  Beattie  received  from  him 
the  last  letter  he  ever  wrote.  A  rapid  decay  of  bodily 
strength  had  set  in,  and  he  never  rallied.  He  had 
frequently  told  Beattie,  his  '  kind,  dear  physician,'  that 
if  he  ever  fell  seriously  ill  care  should  be  taken  to 
acquaint  him  with  the  fact.      Beattie  was  accordingly 

^  Since  these  lines  were  written,  a  memorial  tablet  has  been 
placed  on  the  house  in  the  Rue  St  Jean  where  Campbell  resided. 
The  tablet  describes  him  as  'the  celebrated  English  poet.'  Was 
he  not,  then,  a  Famous  Scot  ? 


I40  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

summoned  to  Boulogne,  but  his  services  were  unavail- 
ing, except  in  so  far  as  he  could  make  the  closing  days 
easier  for  the  patient.  When  the  end  came,  on  the 
iSth  of  June,  it  came  peacefully,  so  peacefully  that 
those  who  were  watching  by  the  bedside  hardly  knew 
when  the  spirit  had  fled. 

Thus  died  Thomas  Campbell,  the  last  of  all  his  long 
family,  'a  lonely  hermit  in  the  vale  of  years.'  There 
was  a  story  that  a  representative  of  the  Glasgow  Ceme- 
tery Company  had  waited  on  the  poor  enfeebled  poet 
about  a  year  before  his  death  to  beg  his  body  for  their 
new  cemetery.  However  this  may  have  been — and  one 
would  prefer  not  to  believe  the  story — when  Campbell 
wrote  his  '  Field  Flowers '  it  seems  clear  that  he  con- 
templated a  grave  by  the  Clyde.  Redding  says  :  '  He 
often  spoke  of  our  going  down  together  to  visit  the 
scenery,  and  of  his  preference  for  it  as  a  last  resting- 
place.'  But  the  field-flowers,  '  earth's  cultur'less  buds,' 
were  not  to  bloom  on  his  grave.  His  body  was  brought 
to  England,  and  on  the  3rd  of  July  was  laid  with  great 
pomp  in  the  Poets'  Corner  of  Westminster  Abbey,  where 
a  fine  statue  now  marks  his  tomb.  A  deputation  of 
Poles  attended,  and  as  the  coffin  was  lowered  a  handful 
of  earth  from  the  grave  of  Kosciusko  was  scattered  over 
the  lid.  It  was  a  simple  but  touching  tribute.  Two 
points  struck  his  intimate  friends  when  they  read  the 
inscription  on  the  coffin  lid.  He  was  described  as 
LL.D.,  a  distinction  he  detested,  and  as  'Author  of 
"The  Pleasures  of  Hope,'"  which  he  detested  too. 


CHAPTER  IX 

PERSONAL    CHARACTERISTICS    AND    PLACE    AS    A    POET 

Something  of  Campbell's  person  and  character  will 
have  already  been  gathered  from  the  foregoing  pages. 
His  friends  unite  in  praise  of  his  eyes  and  his  generally 
handsome  appearance  as  a  young  man.  Lockhart  says 
that  the  eyes  had  a  dark  mixture  of  fire  and  softness 
which  Lawrence's  pencil  alone  could  reproduce.  Pat- 
more  speaks  of  his  '  oval,  perfectly  regular '  features,  to 
which  his  eyes  and  his  bland  smile  gave  an  expression 
such  as  the  moonlight  gives  to  a  summer  landscape. 
The  thinness  of  the  lips  is  commented  upon  by  several 
writers ;  and  it  is  even  said  that  Chantrey  declined  to 
execute  a  bust  because  the  mouth  could  never  look  well 
in  marble.  GilfiUan  observes  that  there  was  nothing 
false  about  him  but  his  hair :  '  he  wore  a  wig,  and  his 
whiskers  were  dyed ' — to  match  the  wig  !  Most  of  his 
acquaintances  remark  on  the  wig,  which  in  his  palmy 
days  was  '  true  to  the  last  curl  of  studious  perfection ' ; 
Lockhart  alone  declares  that  it  impaired  his  appearance 
because  his  choice  of  colour  was  abominable.  Byron's 
picture  of  him  as  he  appeared  at  Holland  House  in 
1 8 1 3  has  often  been  quoted :  '  Campbell  looks  well, 
seems  pleased  and  dressed  to  sprucery.  A  blue  coat 
becomes  him  ;  so  does  his  new  wig.  He  really  looked 
as  if  Apollo  had  sent  him  a  birthday  suit  or  a  wedding 
garment,  and  was  witty  and  lively.' 

But  the  completest  and  most  consistent  description 
is  to  be  found  in  Leigh  Hunt's  Autobiography.  Hunt 
says  :  '  His  skull  was  sharply  cut  and  fine,  with  plenty, 

»4» 


142  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

according  to  the  phrenologists,  both  of  the  reflective 
and  amative  organs.  .  .  .  His  face  and  person  were 
rather  of  a  small  scale ;  his  features  regular,  his  eye 
lively  and  penetrating ;  and  when  he  spoke  dimples 
played  about  his  mouth,  which,  nevertheless,  had  some- 
thing restrained  and  close  in  it.  Some  gentle  puritan 
strain  seemed  to  have  crossed  the  breed  and  to  have 
left  a  stamp  on  his  face,  such  as  we  often  see  in  the 
female  Scotch  face  rather  than  on  the  male.'  After 
Mrs  Campbell's  death  in  1828  he  lost  something  of 
his  old  finical  neatness,  but  he  continued  to  the  last 
to  be  'curious  in  waistcoats  and  buttons.'  Madden 
speaks  of  him  in  his  later  years  as  'an  elderly  gentle- 
man in  a  curly  wig,  with  a  blue  coat  and  brass  buttons, 
very  like  an  ancient  mariner  out  of  uniform  and  his 
natural  element.'  Before  he  left  London  for  Boulogne, 
he  would  be  seen  in  the  streets  with  an  umbrella  tucked 
under  his  arm,  his  boots  and  trousers  all  dust  and  dirt, 
'a  perfect  picture  of  mental  and  bodily  imbecility.' 

The  best  portrait  of  Campbell  is  the  well-known  one 
by  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  engraved  in  most  editions  of 
his  works.  It  was  painted  when  he  was  about  forty 
years  of  age,  and  represents  him  very  much  as  Byron 
described  him.  Redding,  who  had  good  means  of 
judging,  says  that,  barring  the  lips,  which  were  too 
thick,  it  was  'the  perfection  of  resemblance.'  Camp- 
bell was  somewhat  vain  of  his  appearance,  and  would 
never  have  asked,  like  Cromwell,  to  be  painted  warts 
and  all.  He  had,  in  particular,  a  sort  of  feminine 
objection  to  an  artist  making  him  look  old.  Late  in 
life  he  sat  to  Park,  the  sculptor,  when  his  desire  to  be 
reproduced  en  beau  made  him  decline  to  take  off  his 
wig.  Park  made  a  very  successful  bust,  but  Campbell 
disliked  it  just  because  of  its  extreme  truthfulness.  In 
the  Westminster  Abbey  statue  by  Marshall,  the  features, 
according  to  those  who  knew  him,  are  preserved  with 
happy  fidelity,  though  the  attitude  is  somewhat  theatri- 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  143 

cal,  and  we  get  the  notion  of  a  much  taller  and  more 
athletic  figure, 

Campbell's  social  habits  have  been  variously  described. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  occasionally  he  took  too 
much  wine ;  so  did  most  people  at  that  time.  Beattie 
makes  a  long  story  about  it,  pleading  this  and  that  in 
extenuation,  but  there  is  no  need  to  enlarge  on  the 
matter  now.  It  was  merely,  as  Campbell  said  himself, 
a  case  of  being  unable  to  resist  *  such  good  fellows.' 
He  was  never  a  solitary  drinker,  like  De  Quincey  with 
his  opium.  When  he  was  left  a  widower  he  went  more 
into  company  than  he  had  done  before ;  and  apart  from 
his  special  temptations,  there  was  the  fact  that  with  his 
excitable  temperament  his  last  defences  were  carried 
before  a  colder  man's  outworks.  Moreover,  he  found 
that  wine  gave  an  edge  to  his  wit,  and  hence  he  may 
often  have  passed  the  conventional  bounds  in  the  mere 
endeavour  to  promote  the  hilarity  of  his  friends. 

His  other  indulgences  seem  to  have  been  quite 
innocent.  Hunt  hints  at  his  love  of  a  good  dinner, 
which  indeed  has  been  seen  from  his  letters.  He  was 
almost  as  fond  of  the  pipe  as  Tennyson,  and  he  had 
even  been  known  to  chew  tobacco  when  he  found  it 
inconvenient  to  smoke.  He  liked  music,  though  he 
knew  no  more  about  the  theory  of  the  art  than  Scott. 
The  national  songs  of  his  country  specially  appealed  to 
him ;  and  he  was  severe  upon  Dr  Burney,  the  musical 
historian,  because  he  had  not  done  justice  to  the  old 
English  composers.  He  played  the  flute — how  wonder- 
fully flute-playing  has  gone  out  of  fashion ! — and  could 
'  strike  in  now  and  then  with  a  solo,'  His  early  '  vain 
little  weak  passion '  to  have  '  a  fine  characteristic,  manly 
voice '  was  never  realised,  but  with  such  voice  as  he 
had,  he  often  gratified  his  friends  in  a  Scots  song  or  in 
his  own  'Exile  of  Erin,'  'The  Marseillaise'  was  his 
favourite  air,  and  when  on  his  deathbed  he  several  times 
asked  his  niece  to  play  it. 


144  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

But  Campbell  gave  himself  very  little  time  for 
recreation  and  social  enjoyment.  Most  of  his  waking 
hours  were  spent  in  his  study,  where  he  dawdled  uncon- 
scionably over  the  lightest  of  tasks.  As  a  rule  he 
attempted  verse  only  when  in  the  mood.  He  told 
George  Thomson,  who  had  asked  him  for  some  lyrics, 
that  if  he  sat  on  purpose  to  write  a  song  he  felt  sure  it 
would  be  a  failure.  On  the  other  hand,  he  sat  down  to 
produce  prose  with  the  clock-work  regularity  of  Anthony 
TroUope.  He  wrote  very  slowly,  and  would  often  recast 
a  whole  piece  out  of  sheer  caprice,  the  second  version 
being  not  seldom  inferior  to  the  first.  Several  of  his 
friends  speak  of  his  practice  of  adding  pencil  lines  to 
unruled  paper  for  making  transcripts  of  his  verse.  His 
habits  of  study  were  erratic  and  desultory.  He  could 
not  fix  his  thoughts  for  any  length  of  time ;  yet  he 
always  pretended  to  be  prodigiously  busy.  Even  the 
minutes  necessary  for  shaving  he  grudged :  a  man,  he 
said,  might  learn  a  language  in  the  time  given  to  the 
razor.  Scott  wondered  that  he  did  so  little  considering 
the  number  of  years  he  devoted  to  literature.  But  the 
reason  is  plain  :  he  did  not  know  how  to  economise  his 
time.  His  imagination  was  active  enough,  but  it  was 
ill-regulated  and  flighty,  and  his  incapacity  for  protracted 
exertion  led  to  the  abandonment  of  many  well-conceived 
designs.  This  instability,  this  restless,  wayward  irresolu- 
tion, was  the  weak  point  in  his  character.  He  would 
start  of  a  sudden  into  the  country  in  order  to  be  alone, 
and  he  would  be  back  in  London  next  day.  He  would 
arrange  visits  in  eager  anticipation  of  enjoyment,  and 
when  he  arrived  at  his  destination  would  ask  to  be 
immediately  recalled  on  urgent  editorial  business ! 
'There  is  something  about  me,'  he  truly  said,  'that 
lacks  strength  in  brushing  against  the  world,  and  battling 
out  the  evil  day.'  And  he  was  right  when  he  named 
himself  'procrastination  Tom.' 

Campbell  was  not,  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  term,  a 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  145 

society  man.  He  liked  the  company  of  ladies,  especi- 
ally when  they  were  pretty,  but  'talking  women'  he 
detested.  Even  Madame  de  Stael  he  disparaged  be- 
cause she  was  fond  of  showing  off.  For  the  '  high 
gentry,'  to  use  his  own  words,  he  had  an  '  unconquer- 
able aversion.'  To  retain  their  acquaintance,  he  said, 
meant  a  life  of  idleness,  dressing,  and  attendance  on 
their  parties.  He  censured  his  own  countrymen  for 
their  snobbish  deference  to  the  great,  citing  an  instance 
of  Scott  having  become  painfully  obsequious  in  a  com- 
pany when  some  unknown  lordling  arrived.  Anything 
like  formality,  above  all  the  idea  of  being  invited  out  for 
other  than  a  social  and  friendly  object,  made  him  silent 
and  even  morose.  *  They  asked  me  to  show  me,*  he 
observed  of  a  certain  function  ;  '  I  will  never  dine  there 
again.'  Lockhart,  writing  of  this  phase  of  his  character, 
says  there  was  no  reason  why  he  should  not  have  been 
attentive  to  persons  vastly  his  superiors  who  had  any 
sort  of  claim  upon  him ;  no  reason  why  he  should  not 
have  enjoyed,  and  profited  largely  by  enjoying,  '  the 
calm  contemplation  of  that  grand  spectacle  denominated 
the  upper  world.'  As  a  society  star,  Lockhart  is  perhaps 
to  be  excused  for  not  sympathising  with  the  position. 
Campbell  had  his  bread  to  make  by  his  own  industry, 
and  he  could  not  possibly  fill  his  hours  with  forenoon 
calls  and  nightly  levees.  But  more  than  that,  he  was 
not  formed,  either  by  habit  or  by  mode  of  thinking,  for 
the  conventional  round  of  social  life.  A  man  who  puts 
his  knife  in  the  salt-cellar — as,  according  to  Lady 
Morgan,  Campbell  once  did  at  an  aristocratic  table — 
is  not  made  for  associating  with  the  '  high  gentry.'  The 
'  upper  world '  may  indeed  be,  as  Lockhart  says  it  is, 
*  the  best  of  theatres,  the  acting  incomparably  the  first, 
the  actresses  the  prettiest.'  But  Campbell  seems  always 
to  have  felt  as  much  out  of  place  there  as  a  country 
cousin  would  feel  in  a  greenroom.  Various  references 
in  his  letters  suggest  that  he  was  troubled  with  a  nervous 

K 


146  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

self- consciousness,  the  bourgeois  suspicion  that  his 
'  betters '  were  laughing  in  their  sleeve  at  him,  and  the 
natural  result  was  gaucherie  and  sometimes  incivility. 
But  among  his  equals  he  was  another  man.  Hunt  tells 
of  one  great  day  at  Sydenham — a  specimen,  no  doubt, 
of  many  such  days — when  Theodore  Hook  came  to 
dinner  and  amused  the  company  with  some  extempore 
drollery  about  a  piece  of  village  gossip  in  which  Camp- 
bell and  a  certain  lady  were  concerned.  Campbell 
enjoyed  the  fun  immensely,  and  '  having  drunk  a  little 
more  wine  than  usual,'  he  suddenly  took  off  his  wig  and 
dashed  it  at  Hook's  head,  exclaiming :  '  You  dog !  I'll 
throw  my  laurels  at  you.'  Little  wonder  that  one  who 
thus  mingled  vanity  with  horse-play  was  not  quite  at 
home  among  duchesses  ! 

No  two  authorities  agree  as  to  Campbell's  powers  as 
a  talker,  but  the  truth  would  seem  to  be  that  he  shone 
only  at  his  own  table  or  among  his  intimates,  and  even 
then,  as  already  hinted,  only  when  stimulated  by  wine. 
He  was  indeed  too  reserved  to  be  quite  successful  as  a 
conversationalist.  One  of  his  friends  said  he  knew  a 
great  deal  but  was  seldom  in  the  mood  to  tell  what  he 
knew.  He  '  trifled  in  his  table-talk,  and  you  might 
sound  him  about  his  contemporaries  to  very  little 
purpose.'  As  early  as  the  year  1800  he  remarked 
that  he  would  always  hide  his  emotions  and  personal 
feelings  from  the  world  at  large,  and  although  we  come 
upon  an  occasional  burst  of  confidence  in  his  letters,  he 
may  be  said  to  have  kept  up  his  reserve  to  the  end. 
Madden  called  him  '  a  most  shivery  person '  in  the 
presence  of  strangers ;  Tennyson  said  he  was  a  very 
brilliant  talker  in  a  tete-a-tete.  According  to  an  American 
admirer,  he  was  quite  commonplace  unless  when  excited ; 
Lockhart  found  him  witty  only  when  he  had  taken  wine. 
Lytton  was  disappointed  with  him  on  such  occasions  as 
he  met  him  in  general  society,  but  spoke  of  an  evening 
at  his  house  when  Campbell  led  the  conversation  with 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  147 

the  most  sparkling  talk  he  had  ever  heard.  Nothing, 
he  said,  could  equal  'the  riotous  affluence  of  wit,  of 
humour,  of  fancy '  that  Campbell  poured  forth. 

To  this  may  be  added  a  second  quotation  from 
Leigh  Hunt,  which  will  serve  to  bring  out  some  other 
points.     Hunt  writes  : 

Those  who  knew  Mr  Campbell  onl)'  as  the  author  of  '  Gertrude 
of  Wyoming '  and  '  The  Pleasures  of  Hope  '  would  not  have  sus- 
pected him  to  be  a  merry  companion  overflowing  with  humour  and 
anecdote,  and  anything  but  fastidious.  Those  Scotch  poets  have 
always  something  in  reserve.  .  .  I  know  but  of  one  fault  he  had, 
besides  an  extreme  cautiousness  in  his  writings,  and  that  one  was 
national — a  matter  of  words,  and  amply  overpaid  by  a  stream  of 
conversation,  lively,  piquant,  and  liberal,  not  the  less  interesting 
for  occasionally  betraying  an  intimacy  with  pain,  and  for  a  high 
and  somewhat  overstrained  tone  of  voice,  like  a  man  speaking  with 
suspended  breath,  and  in  the  habit  of  subduing  his  feelings.  No 
man  felt  more  kindly  towards  his  fellow-creatures,  or  took  less 
credit  for  it.  When  he  indulged  in  doubt  and  sarcasm,  and  spoke 
contemptuously  of  things  in  general,  he  did  it,  partly,  no  doubt, 
out  of  actual  dissatisfaction,  but  more  perhaps  than  he  suspected 
out  of  a  fear  of  being  thought  weak  and  sensitive ;  which  is  a 
blind  that  the  best  men  commonly  practise.  He  professed  to  be 
hopeless  and  sarcastic,  and  took  pains  all  the  while  to  set  up  a 
University. 

He  seems  to  have  had  a  very  good  opinion  of  his 
own  powers  as  a  talker,  and  apparently  he  some- 
times failed  from  sheer  over-anxiety  to  shine.  At^. 
Holland  House  he  used  to  set  himself  up  against 
Sydney  Smith.  Of  one  visit  he  says :  '  I  was  deter- 
mined I  should  make  as  many  good  jokes  and  speak 
as  much  as  himself;  and  so  I  did,  for  though  I  was 
dressed  at  the  dinner-table  much  like  a  barber's  clerk, 
I  arrogated  greatly,  talked  quizzically,  metaphorically. 
Sydney  said  a  few  good  things  ;  I  said  many.' 

This  is,  of  course,  all  flummery,  whether  Campbell 
was  really  serious  in  his  assertion  or  not.  Whatever 
wit  he  may  have  shown  on  rare  occasions,  he  was  not, 


148  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

like  Sydney  Smith,  naturally  witty.  As  a  writer  his 
forte  lay  in  the  didactic  and  rhetorical,  and  when  he 
attempted  to  move  in  a  lighter  step  he  became  ridicu- 
lous. 'There  never  was  a  man,' says  Redding,  'who 
had  less  of  the  comic  in  his  character  than  Campbell' 
Some  of  his  friends  aver  that  he  often  had  fits  of 
punning,  but  such  of  his  puns  as  have  survived  do  not 
lead  us  to  believe  that  he  can  ever  have  been  very 
successful  in  that  most  mechanical  form  of  wit.  '  I 
have  only  one  muse  and  you  two,  so  you  must  be  the 
better  poet,'  he  once  said  to  Redding ;  the  explanation 
being  that  Campbell's  house  had  one  mews  while 
Redding's  house  had  two.  At  another  time  Redding 
having  complained  that  he  could  not  get  into  his  desk 
for  his  cash  because  he  had  lost  the  key,  Campbell 
replied :  '  Never  mind,  if  nothing  better  turns  up  you 
are  sure  of  a  post  among  the  lack-keys.^  When  Hazlitt 
published  '  The  New  Pygmalion '  he  declared  that  the 
title  ought  to  have  been  '  Hogmalion ' ;  and  he  told  a 
friend  that  the  East  was  the  place  to  write  books  on 
chronology  because  it  was  the  country  of  dates.  These 
are  specimens  of  Campbell's  puns,  from  which  it  will 
be  gathered  that  humour  was  certainly  not  one  of  his 
endowments. 

Nowhere  does  this  lack  of  real  humour  come  out 
more  clearly  than  in  his  letters,  which  are  plain  and 
ponderous  almost  to  the  verge  of  boredom.  There  is 
nothing  in  them  of  that  ever-glowing  necessity  of  brain 
and  blood  which  makes  the  letters  of  Scott  and  Byron, 
for  example,  so  humanly  interesting.  He  has  no  light- 
ness like  Walpole,  no  quiet  whimsicality  like  Cowper,  no 
sidelights  on  literature  and  life  like  Stevenson.  Lock- 
hart's  apology  for  him  is  that,  chained  so  fast  to  the 
dreary  tasks  of  compilation,  he  could  not  be  expected 
to  have  a  stock  of  pleasantry  for  a  copious  correspond- 
ence. But  none  of  the  brilliant  letter-writers  can  be 
suspected  of  having  kept  a  choice  vintage  of  epistolary 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  149 

Falernian  in  carefully  sealed  bottles.  A  man's  individu- 
ality expresses  itself  in  his  letters  as  naturally  as  a 
fountain  flows.  The  truth  is  that  Campbell  was  too 
reserved,  or  too  artificial,  or  both,  to  make  a  good 
letter-writer. 

By  all  accounts  he  had  not  the  best  of  tempers  ; 
indeed  he  admitted  that  to  many  people  he  had  been 
'  irritable,  petulant,  and  overbearing.'  Of  personal 
quarrels,  however,  he  had  very  few ;  and  although  he 
said  that  he  had  been  several  times  on  the  point  of 
sending  challenges,  he  was  not  once  concerned  in  a 
duel.  His  chivalry  led  him  to  take  the  then  bold  step 
of  defending  Lady  Byron's  character  against  the  stric- 
tures of  her  husband,  and  when  the  press  abused  him 
he  regarded  it  as  a  compliment.  Of  his  kindhearted- 
ness  there  are  many  proofs,  apart  from  the  generous 
way  in  which  he  dealt  with  his  widowed  mother  and  his 
sisters.  No  man  was  more  ready  to  perform  a  good  deed. 
His  charities  were  varied  and  widespread.  He  held  the 
view  that  in  tales  of  distress  one  can  never  believe  too 
much,  and  naturally  he  was  often  imposed  upon.  When 
he  was  in  the  country  he  seldom  wrote  without  some 
confidential  communication  in  the  way  of  largess,  often 
in  a  pecuniary  form.  On  one  occasion  he  sent  Redding 
a  couple  of  pounds  for  a  poor  unfortunate  whom  he 
had  been  trying  to  reclaim.  He  made  strenuous  efforts 
to  get  the  child  of  a  couple  who  had  been  condemned 
to  death  adopted  by  some  kindly  person  ;  and  there  is 
a  story  of  him  weeding  out  hundreds  of  volumes  from 
his  library  to  help  a  penniless  widow  to  stock  a  little 
book  shop.  When  subscriptions  were  being  asked  for 
a  memorial  to  Lord  Holland,  he  excused  himself  by 
saying  that  he  must  give  all  he  could  spare  to  the 
Mendicity  Society. 

At  the  same  time,  in  money  matters  he  was  almost 
criminally  careless.  The  British  Consul  at  Algiers  said 
that  his  servant  might  have  cheated  him  to  any  extent. 


I50  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

He  disliked  making  calculations  of  cash  received  or  paid 
away,  and  there  were  times  when  he  knew  nothing  of 
the  real  state  of  his  finances.  He  would  profess  to  be 
in  great  distress  about  money  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
he  had  a  roll  of  bank  notes  in  his  pocket.  In  1841 
Beattie,  while  he  was  absent  at  Wiesbaden,  found  in  an 
old  slipper  at  the  bottom  of  a  cupboard  in  his  house  a 
large  number  of  notes  twisted  into  the  form  of  *  white 
paper  matches.'  When  reproached  with  this  piece  of 
imprudence  Campbell,  admitting  that  the  security  was 

*  slippery,'  remarked  that  '  it  must  have  happened  after 
putting  on  my  night-cap.'  At  certain  periods  of  his  life, 
notably  after  his  wife's  death,  he  was  positively  miserly, 
but  even  then  he  had  his  wayward  fits  of  generosity. 
He  would  throw  away  pounds  one  day,  and  the  next  day 
grudge  sixpences.  Very  often  he  forgot  what  he  had 
spent  or  given  in  charity,  but  he  never  forgot  what  he 
owed. 

One  of  the  most  charming  traits  in  his  character  was 
his  love  for  children.  As  he  put  it  in  his  'Child 
Sweetheart,'  he  held  it  a  religious  duty 

To  love  and  worship  children's  beauty. 
They've  least  the  taint  of  earthly  clod — 
They're  freshest  from  the  hand  of  God. 

He  could  not  bear  to  see  a  child  crossed,  to  hear  it  cry, 
or  have  it  kept  reluctantly  to  books.  Once  at  St 
Leonards  he  drew  a  little  crowd  around  him  on  the 
street  while  trying  to  soothe  a  sick  baby.  What  he 
called  '  infantile  female  beauty '  especially  attracted  him  : 

*  ^<»-children,'  he  said,  not  very  elegantly,  '  are  never  in 
beauty  to  be  compared  with  she  ones.'  He  saw  a  re- 
markably pretty  little  girl  in  the  Park,  and  was  afterwards 
so  haunted  by  the  vision  that  he  actually  inserted  an 
advertisement  in  the  Morning  Chronicle  with  the  view  of 
making  her  acquaintance.  Hoaxes  were  the  natural 
result.     One  reply  directed  him  to  the  house  of  an  old 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  151 

maid — '  a  wretch  who,'  as  he  used  to  say  with  peevish 
humour,  *  had  never  heard  of  either  me  or  my  poetry.' 
Campbell  was  a  man  of  sixty  when  this  incident  occurred. 
His  friends  not  unreasonably  suspected  his  sanity ;  but 
he  was  only  putting  into  practice  the  theory  which  he 
propounded  in  the  lines  just  quoted. 

Politically  Campbell  was  a  Whig  of  the  Whigs,  with 
rancorous  prejudices  which  sometimes  led  him  into 
unpleasant  scrapes.  On  the  question  of  Freedom  he 
held  very  pronounced  opinions.  He  was  called  the 
bard  of  Hope,  but  he  was  the  bard  of  Liberty  too.  He 
abhorred  despotism  of  all  kinds.  '  Let  us  never  think  of 
outliving  our  liberty,'  he  once  wrote.  The  emancipation 
of  the  negroes  he  termed  *a  great  and  glorious  measure.' 
He  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a  perfervid  Scot,  though 
he  speaks  of  something  offending  his  tartan  nationality. 
We  are  told  that  he  never  spared  the  disadvantages  of 
his  country's  climate,  nor  the  foibles  of  the  Lowlanders, 
whatever  these  may  have  been ;  but  just  as  Johnson 
loved  to  gird  at  Garrick,  though  allowing  no  one  else  to 
censure  him,  so  Campbell  would  not  permit  his  native 
country  to  be  attacked  by  another.  He  once  rejected 
an  otherwise  suitable  paper  for  the  New  Monthly  because 
something  which  the  writer  had  said  about  Edinburgh 
did  not  meet  with  his  approval. 

Of  his  religious  views  very  little  is  to  be  learnt, 
certainly  nothing  from  his  poems.  Beattie  says  that 
as  a  young  man  he  suffered  great  anxiety  on  the  subject 
of  religion,  and  spent  much  time  in  its  investigation 
before  he  arrived  at  '  satisfactory  conclusions.'  What 
these  conclusions  were  does  not  exactly  appear.  Redding 
expressly  afifirms  that  he  was  sceptical,  adding  that  he 
was  very  cautious  in  discussing  religious  subjects  with 
strangers.  His  freedom  from  bigotry  was  generally 
remarked :  he  condemned  every  form  of  intolerance, 
and  never  cared  to  ask  a  man  what  his  creed  was.  He 
told  his  nephew  Robert,  who  seems  to  have  had  some 


152  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

misgivings  on  the  point,  that  he  could  get  no  harm  by 
attending  a  Roman  Catholic  Church.  '  God  listens  to 
human  prayers  wherever  they  are  offered  up.'  The 
Catholics  might  be  mistaken,  but  persecution  was  not  a 
necessary  part  of  their  system ;  and  if  it  were,  did  not 
Calvin  and  the  Kirk  of  Geneva,  '  which  is  the  mother 
of  the  Scotch  Kirk,'  get  Servetus  burnt  alive  for  being 
a  heretic?  Campbell  himself  seldom  went  to  church 
in  London,  but  when  he  was  in  Scotland  he  did  as  the 
Scots  did,  and  heroically  sat  out  the  sermon.  It  is 
clear  that  his  countrymen,  of  whose  rigid  righteousness 
he  had  many  good  stories,  did  not  regard  him  as 
heterodox,  otherwise  the  General  Assembly  would  never 
have  asked  him,  as  they  did  in  1808,  to  make  a  new 
metrical  version  of  the  Psalms  '  for  the  benefit  of  the 
congregations.'  Nor  is  it  certain  that  he  was  really 
sceptical,  though  it  is  very  likely  that  he  hesitated  upon 
some  points  of  dogma.  It  is,  however,  only  in  his  later 
years  that  we  get  any  indication  of  his  religious  sensi- 
bility, and  then  only  of  the  vaguest  kind.  When  Mrs 
Campbell  died  he  exclaimed,  as  if  he  had  doubted  the 
fact  before,  '  There  must  be  a  God ;  that  is  evident ; 
there  must  be  an  all-powerful,  inscrutable  God.'  Again, 
when  speaking  of  the  sufferings  of  the  Poles,  he  re- 
marked :  '  There  is  a  Supreme  Judge,  and  in  another 
world  there  will  be  rewards  and  punishments.'  But  we 
are  not  justified  in  forming  any  conclusion  about  his 
settled  religious  convictions  from  emotional  outbursts 
resulting  from  special  circumstances  and  in  the  shadow 
of  the  tomb.  In  all  likelihood  he  paid  the  conven- 
tional observance  to  religion,  and,  if  he  thought  about 
doctrines  at  all,  took  care  not  to  shock  his  family 
and  prejudice  his  popularity  with  any  expression  of 
heterodoxy. 

Campbell's  literary  pasturage  does  not  appear  to  have 
been  very  wide  or  very  rich.  Robert  Carruthers,  of 
Inverness,  who  wrote  an  interesting  account  of  some 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  153 

mornings  spent  with  him,  says  his  library  was  not  exten- 
sive. There  were  one  or  two  good  editions  of  the 
classics,  a  set  of  the  '  Biographic  Universelle,'  some  of 
the  French,  Italian,  and  German  authors,  the  Edinburgh 
Encyclopaedia,  and  several  standard  English  works,  none 
very  modern.  Apparently  he  made  no  attempt  to  keep 
abreast  of  current  literature  ;  he  stuck  by  his  old 
favourites,  and  would  often  be  found  poring  over 
Homer  or  Euripides.  In  his  early  days  Milton,  Thom- 
son, Gray,  and  Goldsmith  were  his  idols  among  the 
poets.  Goldsmith,  it  was  said,  he  could  never  read 
without  shedding  tears,  another  instance  of  his  tendency 
to  snivel.  Thomson's  '  Castle  of  Indolence '  is  fre- 
quently mentioned  with  approbation  in  his  letters — '  it 
is  a  glorious  poem,'  he  said  to  Carruthers — and  seems, 
indeed,  to  have  been  to  some  extent  the  model  of  his 
'  Gertrude.'  Allan  Ramsay  he  called  one  of  his  prime 
favourites,  but,  strange  to  say,  he  does  not  appear  to 
have  regarded  Burns  with  any  special  enthusiasm. 
Certainly  he  told  the  poet's  son  that  Burns  was  the 
Shakespeare  of  Scotland,  and  *  Tam-o'-Shanter  '  a 
masterpiece;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  he  contended — 
unaccountably  enough,  for  surely  Burns'  nationality 
was  the  very  fount  of  his  inspiration — that  Burns  was 
'  the  most  un-Scotsman-like  Scotsman  that  ever  ex- 
isted ' ;  and  in  conversation  he  was  known  to  have 
denounced  his  own  countrymen  for  their  extravagant 
adulation  of  the  Ayrshire  poet. 

Campbell  had  something  of  Southey's  amiable  weak- 
ness for  minor  bards,  and  would  often  praise  work  which 
he  must  have  known  to  be  of  poor  quahty.  He  thought 
very  highly  of  James  Montgomery  of  Sheffield  ;  and  he 
once  called  Mrs  Hemans  '  the  most  elegant  poetess 
that  England  has  produced.'  He  had  no  great  admira- 
tion for  the  Lake  School  of  poets.  He  declared  that 
while  doing  some  good  in  freeing  writers  from  profitless 
and  custom-ridden  rules,  they  went  too  far  by  substitut- 


154  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

ing  licentiousness  for  wholesome  freedom.  For  Cole- 
ridge's poetry  he  evinced  an  especial  distaste,  due  partly, 
no  doubt,  to  the  fact  that  Coleridge  had  attacked  '  The 
Pleasures  of  Hope'  in  his  lectures.  Of  his  criticism 
he  spoke  more  favourably,  but  maintained  that  he  had 
borrowed  many  of  his  ideas  from  Schlegel.  In  French 
poetry  his  favourite  was  Racine,  whose  tenderness,  he 
said,  was  unequalled  even  by  Shakespeare.  But  per- 
haps of  all  the  poets  his  darling  was  Pope,  whom  he 
defended  in  a  manner  described  by  Byron  as  '  glorious.' 
The  '  Rape  of  the  Lock '  he  held  to  be  unsurpassed. 
Of  three  American  writers — Channing,  Irving  and 
Bryant — he  had  the  highest  opinion.  The  first  he  con- 
sidered '  superior  as  a  prose  writer  to  every  other  living 
author,'  a  statement  at  which  we  can  only  raise  our 
eyebrows.  Among  the  novelists  he  specially  extolled 
Smollett  and  Fielding.  To  the  latter  he  says  he  never 
did  justice  in  his  youth,  but  shortly  before  his  death 
he  wrote  that  he  had  come  to  '  venerate'  him,  and  to 
regard  him  as  the  better  philosopher  of  the  two,  the  truer 
painter  of  life.  All  this  shows  no  exceptional  critical 
discernment ;  and  Sydney  Smith  was  no  less  happy  in 
his  phrase  than  usual  when  he  said  that  Campbell's 
mind  had  '  rolled  over '  a  large  field.  A  rolling  stone 
gathers  no  moss.  But  that  is  more  than  Smith  could 
have  meant. 

And  now  what,  it  must  be  asked,  is  Campbell's  place 
as  a  poet?  Before  trying  to  answer  the  question  it  is 
necessary  to  understand  exactly  what  we  mean  by  it. 
If  a  poet's  place  depends  on  the  extent  to  which  he 
is  read,  then  Campbell  has  no  place,  or  almost  none. 
He  is  not  read,  save  by  school-children  for  examinations. 
Milton  and  many  another,  it  might  be  said,  are  in  the 
same  case ;  but  there  is  a  difference.  Milton  will  always 
remain  a  supreme  model,  or  at  least  a  suggestive  fount 
of  inspiration  ;  and  the  lover  of  poetry  can  be  sure  of 
never  turning  to  him  without  some  pleasure,  some  gain. 


THOMAS  CAMPBELL  iS5 

But  Campbell's  pages  are  not  turned  to  by  the  lover  of 
poetry  for  solace  or  refreshment,  for  inspiration  or 
guidance.  As  Horace  Walpole  said  of  two  poems  by 
writers  to  whom  Campbell  owed  something — Akenside 
and  Thomson — 'the  age  has  done  approving  these  poems, 
and  has  forgot  them.'  What  is  this  but  to  say  that  the 
poems  in  the  main  are  lacking  in  the  one  essential — the 
poetic  ?  The  well-spring  of  poetry  was  not  vouchsafed  to 
Campbell.  He  worked  from  the  outside,  not  from  the 
depths  of  his  own  spirit.  He  spoke  of  having  a  poem  '  on 
the  stocks,'  of  beating  out  a  poem  '  on  the  anvil.'  By 
these  words  does  he  not  stand,  before  the  highest  tri- 
bunal, condemned?  We  read  of  him  polishing  ancjl 
polishing  until  what  little  of  original  idea  there  was 
must  have  been  almost  refined  away.  We  never  hear 
of  him  bringing  forth  his  thoughts  with  pain  and  travail. 
His  letters  are  full  of  complaints  about  his  vein  being 
dried  up,  of  his  mind  being  too  much  cumbered  with 
mundane  concerns  to  have  leisure  for  poetry ;  but  we 
never  once  get  a  hint  of  any  real  misgiving  as  to  his 
powers.  *  There  is  no  greater  sin,'  said  Keats,  '  than 
to  flatter  oneself  with  the  idea  of  being  a  great  poet. 
.  .  .  How  comfortable  a  thing  it  is  to  feel  that  such  a 
crime  must  bring  its  own  penalty,  that  if  one  be  a  self- 
deluder,  accounts  must  be  balanced  ! ' 

Time  has  brought  in  its  revenges  for  Campbell.  His 
poems  enshrine  no  great  thoughts,  engender  no  consum- 
mate expression.  Felicities,  prettinesses,  harmonies  of  a 
sort  one  may  find ;  respectabilities,  vigour,  patriotic  and 
liberal  sentiments  declaimed  with  gusto.  But  these  do 
not  raise  him  above  the  level  of  a  third-rate  poet. 
His  war  songs  will  keep  him  alive,  and  that  after  all  is 
no  mean  praise. 


INDEX 


ALGlERSjCampbell'svisit  10,130. 
Altona,  Campbell  at,  58. 
Anderson,  Dr   Robert,   30,   37, 

43.  67-  .     ^, 

Annals  of  Great  Britain,  The,  75. 

Battle  of  the  Baltic,  The,  64. 
Boulogne,  Campbell  settles  at, 
139- 

Campbell,    Alexander,    poet's 
father,  10-13,  67. 

,  Alison,  poet's  son,  90,  99. 

,   Archibald,    poet's   grand- 
father,   10. 
-,    Margaret,    poet's    niece. 


136,   137- 
— ,  Mrs,  poet's  mother,  13,  99. 
Mrs,  poet's  wife,  80,  113, 


119, 

Campbell,  Thomas,  ancestry,  9  ; 
birth,  1 1 ;  at  Grammar  School, 
15 ;  his  love  for  the  classics, 
16;  first  verses,  17,  18;  at 
Glasgow  University,  20-32 ; 
his  professors,  20  ;  his  fellow- 
students,  21  ;  early  turn  for 
satire,  24;  first  visit  to  Edin- 
burgh, 25  ;  becomes  a  tutor, 
27,  32 ;  falls  in  love,  29,  34 ; 
second  visit  to  Edinburgh,  36 ; 
becomes  a  clerk,  37  ;  is  intro- 
duced to  literary  society  of 
capital,  37 ;  his  first  literary 
commission,  39  ;  '  Pleasures  of 
Hope '  published,  43 ;  Con- 
tinental travels,  51-62;  first 
visit  to  London,  62,  66  ;  re- 
turns to  Edinburgh,  68  ;  visits 
Dr  Currie  at  Liverpool,   70 ; 


settles  in  London,  77 ;  his 
marriage,  81  ;  first  child  born, 
83  ;  takes  up  house  at  Syden- 
ham, 85  ;  his  opinion  of  pub- 
lishers, 89  ;  gets  a  Government 
pension,  91  ;  his  '  Gertrude  of 
Wyoming '  published,  94  ;  in- 
troduced to  Princess  of  VVales, 
100  ;  lectures  at  Royal  Institu- 
tion, 100;  visits  Paris,  102; 
lectures  at  Liverpool  and  Bir- 
mingham, 106,  107  ;  visits 
Holland  and  Germany,  109 ; 
founds  London  University, 
115;  elected  Lord  Rector 
Glasgow  University,  117; 
active  interest  in  Polish  cause, 
126;  visits  Algiers,  130; 
settles  at  Boulogne,  139;  his 
death,  139;  his  appearance, 
29,  37,  141  ;  social  habits, 
143  ;  not  a  society  man,  78, 
145 ;  as  a  conversationalist, 
146 ;  his  letters,  148 ;  his 
temper,  chivalry,  kind-hearted- 
ness, 149 ;  love  of  children, 
150;  politics,  151;  religious 
views,  151  ;  literary  tastes, 
152  ;  place  as  a  poet,  154. 

Campbell,  Thomas  Telford, 
poet's  son,  83,  105,  112. 

Child  and  the  Hind,  The,  137. 

Cora  Linn,  133. 

Currie,  Dr,  70,  77,  84. 

Exile  of  Erin,  The,  60. 

Gertrude  of  Wyoming,  94. 
Glasgow    in    Campbell's    young 
days,   14. 

^i1 


158 


INDEX 


Glasgow    University,    Campbell 

Lord  Rector  of,  Il6. 
Glenara,  98. 

Hamburg,  Campbell  in,  52,  58, 

115-  . 
Hohenhnden,  57,  62. 

Holland,  Lord  and  Lady,  66. 

Kant's    Philosophy,    Campbell 

on,  61. 
Kemble,  J.  P.,  67,  71. 
Klopstock,  52. 

LAST  Man,  The,  113. 

Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas,  Camp- 
bell's projected  Life  of,  123. 

Letters  from  the  South,  130. 

Leyden,  John,  38,  63. 

Lines  on  leaving  a  Scene  in 
Bavaria,  64. 

Literary  Union  (The)  founded, 
122. 

LochieVs  Warning,  72. 

London  University  founded  by 
Campbell,  II5. 

M  *Cann,  Tony  ( '  Exile  of  Erin '), 
60. 

Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  66. 

Marryat,  Captain,  125. 

Melrose  Abbey,  Campbell  on,  75. 

Metropolitan  Magazine,  Camp- 
bell's editorship  of,  125. 

Minto,  Lord,  69. 

Murray,  John,  publisher,  88,  93. 

Napoleon,  Campbell  on,  67,  79. 
Neukomm  Chevalier,  126. 
New  Monthly  Magazine,  Camp- 
bell's editorship  of,  III,  123. 


O'CONNOR'S  Child,  98. 

Paul,  Hamilton,  21,  32. 
Petrarch,  Campbell's  Life  of,  135. 
Pilgrim  of  Glencoe,  The,  137. 
Pleasures  of  Hope,  The,  42-48. 
Poland,  Campbell's  interest  in, 
126. 

Ratisbon,  Campbell  at,  53,  no. 
Redding,  Cyrus,  in. 
Reid,  Dr  Thomas,  12,  15. 
Richardson,  John,  55. 
Rogers,  Samuel,  67. 

SCENIC  Annual,  133. 
Schlegel,  A.  W.,  103,  no. 
Scottish    Monastery,    Ratisbon, 

53,  54- 
Shakespeare,  Campbell's  edition 

of,  134. 
Siddons,    Mrs,   67 ;    Campbell's 

Life  of,  128. 
Soldier  s  Dream,  The,  64. 
Specimens  of  the  British  Poets, 

8^  89,  93,  107. 
St  Leonards,  Lines  on  the  Viexv 

from,  125. 

Telford,  Thomas,  71,  72,  77, 

83,  130. 
Theodric,  114. 
Turner's  drawings  for  '  Pleasures 

of  Hope,'  133. 

Watt,  Gregory,  22,  86. 
Wounded  Hussar,  The,  40. 

Ye  Mariners  of  England,  64. 


OPINIONS   OF  THE   PRESS   ON  THE 
"FAMOUS   SCOTS"  SERIES. 


Of  THOMAS  CARLYLE,  by  H.  C.  Macpherson, 

The  Literary  World  says  : — 
"One  of  the  very  best  little  books  on  Carlyle  yet  written,  far  out-weighing  in 
value  some  more  pretentious  works  with  which  we  are  familiar." 

Of  ALLAN  RAMSAY,  by  Oliphant  Smeaton, 

The  Scotsman  says  : — 
"It  is  not  a  patchwork  picture,  but  one  in  which  the  writer,  taking  genuine 
interest  in  his  subject,  and  bestowing  conscientious  pains  on   his  task,  has  his 
materials  well  in  hand,  and  has  used  them  to  produce  a  portrait  that  is  both  life- 
like and  well  balanced." 

Of  HUGH  MILLER,  by  W.  Keith  Leask, 

The  Expository  Times  says  : — 
"  It  is  a  right  good  book  and  a  right  true  biography.  .  .  .  There  is  a  very  fine 
sense  of  Hugh  Miller's  greatness  as  a  man  and  a  Scotsman  ;   there  is  also  a  fine 
choice  of  language  in  making  it  ours." 

Of  JOHN  KNOX,  by  A.  Taylor  Innes, 

Mr  Hay  Fleming  in  the  Bookman  says  : — 
"A  masterly  delineation  of  those  stirring  times  in  Scotland,  and  of  that  famous 
Scot  who  helped  so  much  to  shape  them." 

Of  ROBERT  BURNS,  by  Gabriel  Setoun, 

The  New  Age  says  : — 
"  It  is  the  best  thing  on  Bums  we  have  yet  had,  almost  as  good  as  Carlyle's 
Essay  and  the  pamphlet  published  by  Dr  Nichol  of  Glasgow." 

Of  THE  BALLAD  I STS,  by  John  Geddie, 

The  Spectator  says  : — 
"  The  author  has  certainly  made  a  contribution  of  remarkable  value  to  the 
literary  history  of  Scotland.     We  do  not  know  of  a  book  in  which  the  subject  has 
been  treated  with  deeper  sympathy  or  out  of  a  fuller  knowledge." 

Of  RICHARD  CAMERON,  by  Professor  Herkless, 
The  Dundee  Courier  says : — 

"In  selecling  Professor  Herkless  to  prepare  this  addition  to  the  '  Famous  Scots 
Series'  of  books,  the  publishers  have  made  an  excellent  choice.  The  vigorous, 
manly  style  adopted  is  exactly  suited  to  the  subject,  and  Richard  Cameron  is 
presented  to  the  reader  in  a  manner  as  interesting  as  it  is  impressive.  .  .  . 
Professor  Herkless  has  done  remarkably  well,  and  the  portrait  he  has  so  cleverly 
delineated  of  one  of  Scotland's  most  cherished  heroes  is  one  that  will  never  fade." 

Of  SIR  JAMES  YOUNG  SIMPSON,  by  Eve  Blantyre 

Simpson, 
The  Daily  Chronicle  says  : — 
"  It  is  indeed  long  since  we  have  read  such  a  charmingly-written  biography  as 
this  little  Life  of  the  most  typical  and  '  Famous  Scot '  that  his  countrymen  hava 
been  proud  of  since  the  time  of  Sir  Walter.  .  .  .  There  is  not  a  dull,  irrelevant, 
or  superfluous  page  in  all  Miss  Simpson's  booklet,  and  she  has  performed  the 
biographer's  chief  duty— that  of  selection — with  consummate  skill  and  judgment." 


Press  Opinions  on  "Famous  Scots"  Series — continued 


Of  THOMAS  CHALMERS,  by  W.  Garden  Blaikie, 

The  Spectator  says  : — 
"  The  most  notable  feature  of  Professor  Blaikie's  book — and  none  could  be  more 
commendable — is  its  perfect  balance  and  proportion.     In  other  words,  justice  is 
done  equally  to  the  private  and  to  the  public  life  of  Chalmers,  if  possible  greater 
justice  than  has  been  done  by  Mrs  Oliphant." 

Of  JAMES  BOSWELL,  by  W.  Keith  Leask, 

The  Morning  Leader  says  : — 
"  Mr  W.  K.  Leask  has  approached  the  biographer  of  Johnson  in  the  only  possible 
way  by  which  a  really  interesting  book  could  have  been  arrived  at — by  way  of  the 
open  mind.  .  .  .  The  defence  of  Boswell  in  the  concluding  chapter  of  his  delightful 
study  is  one  of  the  finest  and  most  convincing  passages  that  have  recently  appeared 
in  the  field  of  British  biography." 

Of  TOBIAS  SMOLLETT,  by  Oliphant  Smeaton, 

The  Weekly  Scotsman  says  : — 
"The  book  is  written  in  a  crisp  and  lively  style.  .  .  .  The  picture  of  the  great 
novelist  is  complete  and  lifelike.  Not  only  does  Mr  Smeaton  give  a  scholarly 
sketch  and  estimate  of  Smollett's  literary  career,  he  constantly  keeps  the  reader  in 
conscious  touch  and  sympathy  with  his  personality,  and  produces  a  portrait  of  the 
man  as  a  man  which  is  not  likely  to  be  readily  forgotten." 

Of  FLETCHER  OF  SALTOUN,  by  W.  G.  T.  Omond, 

The  Leeds  Mercury  says  : — 
"  Unmistakably  the  most  interesting  and  complete  story  of  the  life  of  Fletcher  of 
Saltoun  that  has  yet  appeared.     Mr  Omond  has  had  many  facilities  placed  at  his 
disposal,  and  of  these  he  has  made  excellent  use." 

Of  THE  BLACKWOOD  GROUP,  by  Sir  George  Douglas, 

The  Weekly  Citizen  says  : — 
"  It  need  not  be  said  that  to  everyone  interested  in  the  literature  of  the  first  half 
of  the  century,  and  especially  to  every  Scot<;man  so  interested,  '  The  Blackwood 
Group '  is  a  phrase  abounding  in  promise.  And  really  Sir  George  Douglas  fulfils 
the  promise  he  tacitly  makes  in  his  title.  He  is  intimately  acquainted  not  only 
with  the  books  of  the  different  members  of  the  '  group,'  but  also  with  their  environ- 
ment, social  and  otherwise.  Besides,  he  writes  with  sympathy  as  well  as  know- 
ledge." 

Of  NORMAN  MACLEOD,  by  John  Wellwood, 

The  Star  says  : — 
"A  worthy  addition  to  the  '  Famous  Scots  Series'  is  that  of  Norman  Macleod, 
the  renowned  minister  of  the  Barony  in  Glasgow,  and  a  man  as  typical  of  every- 
thing generous  and  broadminded  in  the  State  Church  in  Scotland  as  Thomas 
Guthrie  was  in  the  Free  Churches.  The  biography  is  the  work  of  John  Wellwood, 
who  has  approached  it  with  proper  appreciation  of  the  robustness  of  the  subject." 

Of  SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  by  George  Saintsbury, 

The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  says  : — 
"  Mr  Saintsbury's  miniature  is  a  gem  of  its  kind.      .  .  Mr  Saintsbury's  critique 
of  the  Waverley  Novels  will,  I  venture  to  think^  despite  all  that  has  been  written 
upon  them,  discover  fresh  beauties  for  their  admirers." 

Of  KIRKCALDY  OF  GRANGE,  by  Louis  A.  Barb6. 

The  Scotsman  says  : — 
"  Mr  Barb^'s  sketch  sticks  close  to  the  facts  of  his  life,  and  these  are  sought  out 
from  the  best  sources  and  are  arranged  with  much  judgment,  and  on  the  whole 
with  an  impartial  mind." 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


1955 


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